LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



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Shelf .B..X 2.33 3 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Dr. Deems' Sermo^ 

FORTY-EIGHT DISCOURSES, 

COMPRISING 

EVERY SUNDAY MORNING SERMON 

PREACHED 

FROM THE PULPIT OF "THE CHURCH OF THE STRANGERS," 

BY THE PASTOR. 





2>.X2 33 
■1)41) 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S85, by 

FUNK & WAGNALLS, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



PREFACE. 



When the Church of the Strangers moved into the edifice furnished by the munificence 
of the late 'Cornelius Vanderbilt, Esq., a few zealous parishioners brought out in beautiful 
style the sermons delivered by the pastor on the first forty-eight Sunday mornings in which 
he officiated. It was no affected modesty which led me to feel that the sermons were hardly 
worth the pains thus kindly taken. But some of them were repreached by special request : 
some before colleges and elsewhere : some were reprinted in various periodicals. A very 
large edition of a selection from these discourses appeared in London and found their way 
through Great Britain. Many pleasant incidents have become known, showing that they have 
been instructive to some and comforting to others in various parts of the world. Since 
they have been out of print, applications for copies have shown that they were not entirely 
forgotten. Messrs. Funk and Wagnalls are very apt to know where there is a market, if 
there be one, and to make a market where there is none. Naturally a man who 
preaches earnestly what he cordially believes, is gratified when his congregation is enlarged. 
This new edition goes forth with most sincere prayer that it may be abundantly blessed as 
it travels on its mission. 

Charles F. Deems. 

Church of the Strangers, 

New York, id October, 1885. 



I 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

1. Christianity confronting Frivolous Skepticism, - - Acts, xxvi. 25, 7 

2. Are Christians Narrow? l Cor. ii. 2, 14 

3. Meat for Men, - - - - - - - - Heb. v. 12-14, 20 

4. Christ the Liberator, ------- - John, viii. 36, 26 

5. Taking the Stone away, -------- John, xi. 39, 32 

6. A Despicable Minister, - Titus, ii. 15, 38 

7. Avoiding Sins of evert Appearance, - - - - - 1 Thessalonians, v. 22, 44 

8. Night and Morning, ------- - Psalm xxx. 5, 50 

9. No Boom for Jesus, ------- - Luke, ii. 7, 56 

10. Eben-Ezer, — An Anniversary Sermon, ----- 1 Samuel, vii. 12, 61 

11. Spiritual-'mlndedness, ------- Philippians, iv. 4-7, G7 

12. The Great Truth, -------- Galatians, ii. 12, 73 

13. Jesus, our Martyr-King, John, xviii. 37, 79 

14. The Kingdom of God, -------- Luke, iv. 43, 85 

15. Why the Son of Man came, ------- Luke, xix. 10, 91 

16. Lost, ---------- Luke, xv. 3-10, 97 

17. The Trinity of Excellencies, ------ Micah, vi. 8, 103 

18. Beauty for Ashes, --------- Isaiah, lxi. 3, 110 

19. Mystery, --------- Colossians, i. 26, 27, 116 

20. What Jesus saw from the Cross, ------ Isaiah, liii. 11, 122 

21. The Destroyer of the Devil's Works, ----- l John, iii. 8, 128 

22. The Sign of Jonas, --------- Matt. xii. 39, 134 

23. God's Glory shinlng in Jesus, - - - - - - - 2 Cor. iv. 6, 140 

24. Rest, ----------- Matt. xi. 28, 146 

25. Christ's Cure for Trouble, ------- John, xiv. 1-4, 152 

26. Leasing, ---------- Psalm iv. 2, 159 

27. Folly of Trusting our own Heart, ----- Proverbs, xxviii. 26, 165 

28. In Memoriam: Dr. Nathanael W. Seat, ----- Romans, xiv. 7, 172 

29. The Seen and the Unseen, - ----- 2 Cor. iv. 17, 18. 178 

30. Mary : Religion in Beauty, Mark, xiv. 6-8, 185 
81. Martha : Religion in Service, ------- John, xii. 2, 192 



6 



Contents. 



TAGE 



32. How Old art Thou? 


Genesis, xlvii. 8-10, 


198 


33. Christ's Pledge, - - 


John, vi. 37, 


205 


34. The Past, 


Ecclesiastes, iii. 15, 


211 


35. God is Love, - 


- 1 John, iv. 16, 


217 


36. A Prophylactic op Covetousness, - 


- Luke, xii. 15-20, 


223 


37. Faith and Confession, - 


Romans, x. 9, 10, 


229 


38. The Memorial Sutter, - 


Luke, xxii. 19, 


236 


39. Sons of God, - 


1 John, iii. 2, 


243 


40. The Old Question, - - - 


John, ix. 1, 2, 


249 


41. Characteristics of a Sinful Life, 


- Romans, vi. 21, 


255 


42. Help those Women, ------ 


Philippians, iv. 3, 


261 


43. The Elder Brother, ----- 


Luke, xv. 28, 


268 


44. Judge Not, - - - - 


Matt. vii. 1, 2, 


274 


45. Not Yet, ------ 


Haggai, i. 2, 


281 


46. Secret Discipleship, ------ 


- John, xix. 38, 


287 


47. Reconciliation, ------ 


- 2 Cor. v. 18, 19, 


293 


48, Influence of Christianity on the Life, 


- 1 Cor. vii. 29, 


299 



"i AM NOT MAD, MOST NOBLE FESTUS." — ACTS, XXVI. 25. 



These words were uttered under circum- 
stances of great interest. The enemies of St. 
Paul in the bosom of the church in Jerusalem 
had stirred up discontent among his Gentile 
converts, by means of emissaries whom they 
had sent out for this purpose. This glorious 
apostle was called to the discipline endured by 
every great soul in the church, namely, the in- 
terference and hostility of false brethren, people 
in the church making "constitutional" difficulties, 
fighting the broad, great soul because he could 
not see that sectarianism is everything, and 
could not acknowledge that truth is valuable 
mly as it helps sectarianism. That is what 
orought Paul to Jerusalem, and cut short his 
glorious career among the Gentiles. He de- 
sired to conciliate the Mother Church, and to 
break the power of those in that church who 
were striving to render Christianity a mere sect 
of Judaism. 

But the very course which he pursued to ac- 
complish this end led him into greater difficul- 
ties. On a high-festival day, the day of Pente- 
cost, he went into the temple with four Chris- 
tians, who were Nazarites, having purified him- 
self, with them, 4 ' to signify the accomplishment 
of the days of purification, and that an offering 
should be offered for every one of them." (See 
Acts, xxi.) This he did to refute the charge 
that he was hostile to the national worship. But 
the result was disastrous. There were present 
many persons from the provinces, who were all 
the more stringent Jews because they had had 
to maintain their religion under a greater pres- 
sure, and these people recognized Paul. An 
uproar ensued. Paul would have been destroyed 
if the officer had not removed him to the bar- 
racks. Of the conspiracy against him, of his 
removal to Cassarea, of Felix's double dealing 
toward him, you may read in the Acts of the 
Apostles. When Felix left office, to do the Jews 
a pleasure he suffered St. Paul to remain in the 
prison. There the new governor, Festus, found 
him, after two years, during which his great 
powers had been locked up by events produced 
by the jealousy and malice of his own Christian 
brethren. 



Soon after his arrival at his new capital, Festus 
made a visit to Jerusalem, when the chief priests 
and others stirred him up against Paul, and, 
upon the return of Festus, Paul was brought to 
trial, in which there was nothing made to ap- 
pear worthy of death. Festus, who was a man 
of the world, superficial and frivolous, but ap- 
parently not malignant, seeing that the whole 
affair, so far as he could understand it, hinged 
on questions of Jewish law, desired Paul to go 
to Jerusalem and be tried before the Sanhedrin. 
The apostle, knowing that he should be assas- 
sinated if he consented to this journey, declined 
trial under Jewish law, and, using his rights 
as a Roman citizen, appealed to Caesar. Shortly 
after Festus received a visit of ceremony from 
Agrippa II., King of Chalcis, and his sister Ber- 
nice. Agrippa, from his youth, had been famil- 
iar with Jewish questions and habits of thought. 
Festus took advantage of this visit to secure the 
advice of Agrippa in drawing up the papers 
necessary to accompany the prisoner when he 
should be sent up to Rome. And so a most 
formal and impressive interview was had be- 
tween Agrippa and Bernice, with Festus on the 
one side, and St. Paul on the other. 

This epitome of the history has been given, 
dear brethren, that you may appreciate the po- 
sition of Paul when he made the utterance of 
this remarkable speech, and that you may be 
reminded that it is not true in history that the 
" early church" lived in a golden, happy age. 
We have a great amount of weak sentiment 
about the purity of the early church ; but, as 
far as I can see, it was quite as corrupt in the 
days of the apostles as it has ever been since. 
Every man of power who rises in any branch of 
the Christian church to-day is assailed, maligned, 
misrepresented, sometimes by clergymen of 
his own denomination. But it was just so in 
the days of the apostles. The cravens and 
plotters were secretly at work in Jerusalem 
against Paul, while he was exerting his great 
power among the Gentiles to bring them to 
Christ. He had every worldly reason for quit- 
ting the Christian church ; and if he had not 
been a man of principle and conscience he 



8 



Christianity Confronting Frivolous Skepticism. 



would have made that abandonment. But 
nothing shook him. Civil power had no terrors 
for him, nor the thunders of ecclesiastical courts. 
The opposition of enemies and the faithlessness 
of false brethren did not move him. 

So, when he came to stand before these high 
personages, we find that imprisonment had not 
impaired his powers, nor weakened his convic- 
tions. He thought himself happy to be able to 
speak before the king, because Agrippa knew 
much of the subjects he should discuss, as every 
sensible man prefers to address the well-informed. 
You recollect his admirable statement of his case. 
When he reached the point of the resurrection 
of the dead, Festus — ignorant, frivolous, cold, 
and skeptical — cried out, in ridicule: "Paul, 
thou art beside thyself j" but, being a gentle- 
man, and feeling how vile it would be to insult 
a prisoner in his power, he instantly and politely 
added : "much learning doth make thee mad." 
And Paul, full of power and enthusiasm, but 
most mannerly and refined, made the solemn 
reply of the text: "I am not mad, most noble 
Festus, but speak forth the words of truth and 
soberness." And, turning from the ignorant 
governor, he addressed to the royal voluptuary 
beside him an appeal so courtly, so reasonable, 
so powerful, that all present must have felt the 
falseness of the charge of Festus. 

This does not seem to be the only occasion in 
which an aberration of intellect was imputed to 
Paul. There are several expressions in the 
Epistles (as in 2 Corinth, v. 13) which imply 
that he was considered to be beside himself. 
But this imputation was not a peculiarity of 
Paul's case. Generally, the men of the world, 
those who study and pursue " the things which 
are seen," regard the men who gaze at "the 
things which are not seen" as crazed. The con- 
duct of the latter is so contrary to all the opin- 
ions, principles, and modes of reasoning of the 
former, that they can be accounted for only on 
the supposition of mental derangement. And 
the fact is that somebody Is crazy. If Festus, 
spending a life of frivolity and selfishness ; if 
Agrippa, wasting his powers in voluptuousness 
and licentiousness ; if Bernice, degrading her 
beauty to incest and lust — if these people were 
living reasonably, then Paul was an eminent 
fool. But if Paul, in abandoning the advan- 
tages of learning, rank, and influence ; in break- 
ing the dear and powerful bands of early associ- 
ations; in embarking all he was and all he had 
in the seemingly frail enterprise of this new 
religion ; in forsaking all and following Christ, 
counting all but loss for Christ — if he was sane, 



then Festus, Bernice, and Agrippa were utterly 
mad. The dilemma presented itself clearly to 
Festus ; and so, to save himself, he cried : 
"Paul, thou art beside thyself." But Paul 
gave him the retort courteous in the reply, 
"/ am not mad," and by the significance of 
his emphasis and his glance said : " One of us 
is deranged, most certainly ; but, Festus, it is 
not/." 

Just so have you who are unconverted fre- 
quently felt. You have seen devotion to Christ 
lead your friends away from frivolities, from the 
slavery of fashion, from selfish indulgences, 
from all the pleasures of " the lust of the flesh, 
the lust of the eye, and the pride of life;" you 
have seen that devotion issue in a consecration 
of body, intellect, power, property, and life to 
the cause of Jesus ; and it has seemed to you 
amazing, and you have said: "These Christians 
are mad." And thus you have dismissed your 
conscience. 

And you, dear Christian brethren, when you 
have seen the worldly forgetter of God go pros- 
pering in his way, and have been compelled to 
endure poverty and privation for the election 
you have made to follow Christ, have had a 
suspicion cross your minds, that perhaps your 
course was one of folly, if not of real madness, 
and the very suspicion has been a momentary 
weakness. It certainly is true that, if sinners be 
not crazy, then true Christians are mad. But 
are Christians mad ? Does devotion to fesus 
and hope of salvation from the hell of sin, 
through His merits and offices, argue a dis- 
eased intellect ? If so, where is the diseased 
spot in the spiritual constitution ? 

According to the accepted analysis of the in- 
terior constitution of man, if there be derange- 
ment it must be in the department of intellect, 
or in that of the emotions, or in that of the will. 
Where is it in the case of the Christian ? Does 
he fail to observe as accurately, to compare as 
thoroughly, to reason as logically as other men ? 
Or, does he fail to have the emotions which 
naturally and healthfully follow any correct 
course of reasoning ? Or, does his will crazily 
switch the train of his reasonings and feelings 
off the track of right mental progression, and 
capriciously break the connection between right 
reasoning, right feeling, and right action ? 
Where is the madness ? 

Let us specify : 

1. He believes there is a God, Sovereign 
Governor as Almighty Maker of the Universe. 
He receives this proposition from intuition, or 
he reaches it by logical processes. There is 



Christianity Confronting Frivolous Skepticism. 9 



such a thing as intuition. Immediately, without 
intervention or aid of a third idea or middle 
term, the mind perceives the agreement or disa- 
greement of two ideas. In mathematics a prop- 
osition so received is called an axiom. In morals 
we speak of self-evident propositions. Suppose 
the Christian take the ground that he intuitively 
perceives the truth of this proposition : could 
you any more easily show that this arose from a 
diseased state of his intellect, than you could 
show that he is deranged when he takes the 
ground that he perceives by intuition that a 
whole is greater than any of its parts ? Or, 
suppose he have reached a conviction of the 
truth of the proposition of the existence of a 
personal God by logical processes, believing 
that His eternal power and Godhead are de- 
monstrated by the things He hath made, would 
you not have as great difficulty in showing — not 
simply a fallacy in the reasoning, for that occa- 
sionally occurs with the sanest man, and is not 
now the question, but — that this conclusion, or 
the mode by which it was reached, demonstrated 
a diseased intellect ? If you undertake this in 
regard to the Christian, you are to do the work 
so thoroughly as to show that not only he is 
crazy, but that as well all Jewish and pagan 
philosophers and poets who have stood in 
princely pre-eminence in the Court of Thought 
have been madmen ; that all the leaders of man- 
kind, those who in every other department of 
intellectual operation have been master work- 
men, are here utterly at fault ; and that the 
great majority of all men in all ages have been 
deranged. 

But atheists in the intellect are scarce. From 
all other professing theists the Christian is dis- 
tinguished by feeling as he should feel when this 
proposition is believed. If there be a God, He 
must be the moral ruler of the Universe ; He 
must be the father of our spirits. It is just here 
that Christianity comes in with its blessed offices 
of illumination and direction and quickening of 
the moral sense. " Oh, yes, there is a God, 
certainly," says another man, and goes about his 
work or his pleasure as if God were nothing to 
him, as if he were not Moral Governor and 
Judge, as if the man were no kinsman of God. 
The Christian has adoring reverence and tender, 
child-like, filial regard for the loving All-Father. 
Say " God" to him, and it is as if you said 
"Mother" to an invalid child separated by 
leagues of sea from that one sweetest, dearest 
friend to whom it owes its life. Say " God" to 
him, and instantly you envelop his whole moral 
nature in a sense of the existence of a law that is 



holy, just, and good. He feels that there is a 
right and a wrong, that the right pleases and 
the wrong displeases THE Father; that the 
right is good and the wrong bad; that the right 
is life and the wrong is death. His loves and 
hates, all his emotions, are under the shaping 
hand of this powerful belief. And so he is 
brought to love the pure, the beautiful, and the 
high, and to hate the filthy, the ugly, and the 
vile. 

Now, is that healthy or otherwise? Mark, 
the question is not now whether there be a God, 
but whether, believing there is a God, a man 
should feel as a Christian feels. It is now a 
question concerning the emotional part of man. 
Is it madness, when you believe that a certain 
man is your father, to feel filially toward him, 
whether you be mistaken on the question of 
paternity or not ? 

A Christian is one who is striving to conform 
himself to a relation which he believes to exist 
between God and himself, being impelled there- 
to by feeling as he ought to feel on faith in the 
existence of that relation. Does that prove an 
unhealthy state of the will? Is it madness to 
will to do what you feel you ought to do, because 
you believe that you ought to do it ? That is 
the case of the Christian as to God. Paul is not 
mad, most noble Festus ! 

2. A Christian believes that the " Father of 
Lights and of Spirits" — one of his synonyms for 
"God" — does give light to spirits, divine illu- 
mination to the souls of men ; arid that this is 
done partly by a revelation which is in words, 
now printed, in a book well known as the Bible, 
and partly by the unseen influence of His Spirit 
upon man's spirit. Does that demonstrate men- 
tal alienation ? Hold yourselves to the real 
question. It is not, is the Bible the inspired 
Word of God, and if so, how, and how far ? All 
parts of that question might be answered vari- 
ously, and yet a man be mentally sane and in- 
tellectually consistent in believing the Bible to 
be the Word of God, in a sense not applicable 
to any other known book. The objector must 
show, not simply that there has been some fal- 
lacy in the process by which a Christian reaches 
the conclusion that God most probably would 
reveal His will to man ; that He would most 
probably do so as he believes it is done in the 
Bible ; but he must show that none but a crazy 
man would accept the premises of the Christian, 
or, from such premises, reach such conclusions. 
The burden of proof is on Festus, not on Paul. 
We will not prove our sanity, Festus, but we 
challenge you to prove our insanity. Show that 



12 Christianity Confronting Frivolous Skepticism. 



tion for his sins, and for singing with trustful 
vehemence — 

" My God is reconciled, 

His pard'ning voice I hear ; 
He owns me for His child, 

I can no longer fear. 
With confidence I now draw nigh, 
And Abba, Father, Abba, cry !" 

(3.) And you see, dear brethren, when a man 
looks below his acts to the nature from which 
they spring, he discovers that not simply is the 
fruit bad, but the tree on which it grows, and 
that the tree is bad because its sap is bad. He 
has made the discovery that he is naturally de- 
praved. There may be differences of opinion 
as to whether this depravity be partial or total, 
even among Christians ; but is a man insane be- 
cause he believes that by nature he is depraved ? 
Your science teaches you that each man inherits 
the physical and intellectual qualities of his an- 
cestors, as far back as they can be traced ; that 
depravity of body runs down the current of the 
race ; that inherited depravity of intellect is a 
proposition easily demonstrable. If he reason 
analogically to a probable depravity of soul, how 
are you to show him a madman ? And if he per- 
ceive that bad things come out of his nature, 
and reason thence to the depravity of that na- 
ture, how are you to prove him insane ? 

Once having reached that conviction, would 
he not be at least an imbecile if he should 
make no effort to purge his soul and to purify 
his whole nature ? A Christian is one who, if 
not yet holy, is at least seeking holiness. The 
Bible method is described as submitting the un- 
holy spirit of men to the influences of the Holy 
Spirit of God. There is no other scientific method 
of becoming holy. You purge matter with mat- 
ter. You apply material substances to your 
material bodies to cleanse them inwardly and 
outwardly of material filth and obstructions. 
Did you ever know any physician to attempt to 
purge a fearfully obstructed biliary duct by re- 
citing to his patient a transcendently beautiful 
poem, or any surgeon attempt to discuss a tumor 
by presenting to the intellect of his patient a 
concatenation of conclusive arguments ? On 
the other hand you purge mind with mind. 
You bring intellect to bear on intellect to dissi- 
pate mental crudities and strengthen mental 
weaknesses. Would not that teacher be regarded 
as insane who should poultice the head of his 
pupil for stupidity, administer pills to develop 
his logical powers, or rub him with liniments to 
quicken his poetical perceptions ? 



Matter to matter, mind to mind, spirit to 
spirit — that's God's obvious law. You adminis- 
ter physical remedies for physical ailments or 
weaknesses ; you present facts to the under- 
standing, truth to the reason, grandeur to the 
imagination, and beauty to the taste, in order to 
elevate and purify a man intellectually — and you 
are sane. The Christian does that and still 
finds his spirit corrupt. What must he do ? 
All the materials known to pharmacy will not 
" purge his conscience from dead works." All 
the facts observed and recorded, all the truths 
uttered and written, all the poetry imagined or 
fancied, will not, cannot, make him holy and 
full of hope. Some of the most corrupt men 
have been as handsome as Apollo, and some of 
the most corrupt women have been as physically 
wholesome as Hebe ; some of the most corrupt 
men have reasoned like Bacon and rhymed like 
Byron, and some of the most healthful and 
gifted women have been Aspasias. How must 
a man become holy? That is the grand ques- 
tion. He must submit his unholy spirit to a 
holy spirit. All that physical and metaphysical 
researches ever discovered show that. Every 
discovery in physics, in mind, in psychology for 
a thousand years goes to make good every theo- 
logical tenet of St. Paul. 

Now where is that Holy Spirit to which my 
spirit must be submitted for my sanctification ? 
Certainly not in any other man. Every other 
man is in my spiritual predicament. It is out- 
side the circle of humanity. It is in some other 
kind of creature, or it is in God. The only 
spirit in the universe in regard to whom all rea- 
son says that He must be immaculate, and not 
only uncorrupt but incorruptible, is God Al- 
mighty. The Christian acts, as every candid 
atheist even will admit he ought to act, under 
such reasoning and with such conviction ; he 
submits his spirit, his ghost, to the Holy Spirit, 
• to the Holy Ghost of God. With such strict- 
ness of analogical reasoning and such healthfull- 
ness of feeling, and with the visible, blessed 
effects, how can you, Festus, how dare you, 
with your denials, your want of affirmations, 
your no-faith, turn upon this honest man, this 
man with upturned face and straightforward life, 
this man of power to endure and courage to 
dare all that man or hero ought to venture or to 
do, how dare you call hi?n madman ? You 
weakling, dawdling in the lap of luxury, how 
dare you call him mad who has discovered and 
is wielding a power which is to shake the nations 
when you are a handful of ungathered ashes ? 
You almost cipher, to be unmentioned in all 



Christianity Confronting Frivolous Skepticism. 13 



the ages except as you are to be held up to the 
contempt of the generations as another instance 
of a pigmy in spirit on an Alps of power — that 
chained prisoner has crushed you with one ges- 
ture of his left arm ; that man in bonds has pil- 
loried you on your throne forever. 

Dear Christian brethren, ye are not crazy. 
But, oh ! it were madness in you to profess 
these high beliefs of Paul, and go living like 
Festus — to say daily " our Father," and walk 
the world with the forlorn air of orphanage ; to 
accept the Bible as the word of God, and let it 
have no more influence upon your life than so 
much waste and worthless paper ; to profess 
yourselves sinners, and seek no salvation ; to 
acknowledge Jesus, and yet not let Him save 
you; to confess the Holy Ghost, and yet quench 
the Spirit, and refuse to be sanctified. It is in- 
sanity not to feel as you ought to feel to be in 
accord with your belief, and it is madness to have 
your wills and lives run violently across your 



convictions. Oh, be all Christ's ! Let your 
consecration be round, full, and entire ! It will 
tear you from many a present pursuit. It will 
draw on you the charge of singularity, eccen- 
tricity, craziness, insanity, madness. But if a 
clear faith, a pure hope, and an ardent love be 
madness; if it be madness to have the " fruits 
of the Spirit," which are "love, joy, peace, 
long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meek- 
ness, temperance ;" if to live heroically and die 
peacefully be madness, then I say be mad, and 
let the Festuses and the fools be sane. Then 
madness is grandeur and glory, and sanity is 
insignificance and contempt; then madness is 
light and rapture, and sanity is gloom and 
wretchedness. Then better, far better, be a 
good, strong, consistent, happy, triumphant, 
earth - conquering, heaven- winning madman, 
than to be a wicked, weak, wavering, miserable, 
cowardly philosopher, to whom life is all puzzle 
and death all terror. 



II. 

" FOR I DETERMINED NOT TO KNOW ANYTHING AMONG YOU, SAVE JESUS CHRIST, 
AND HIM CRUCIFIED." — I COR. II. 2. 



Last Sunday we discussed the question wheth- 
er the charge of insanity could be established 
against Christians. This text leads us to examine 
the question whether Christianity has the ten- 
dency to make men narrow in any department of 
character. Paul is a representative Christian as 
well as a representative preacher. He preached 
to the Corinthians all that had done him any 
good, and all he knew that would do them 
good. That was the crucified Jesus Christ. 

At the first announcement, this seems a nar- 
row basis on which to erect a private character 
and a public life. But Paul deliberately adopted 
it. In his case it succeeded. He believed it 
must succeed in every case. So, he determined 
not to know anything among his brethren "save 
Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." To a Greek, 
occupied with his philosophies, to a Roman, 
taken up with his politics, it must have seemed 
absurd to have only one subject of thought and 
only one theme of discourse, and that the char- 
acter and supposed offices of a man who had 
died shamefully on a cross. Even now, the 
superficial scientists and the engrossed mate- 
rialists of this age regard the whole system of 
Christianity as a narrow theory, and the whole 
matter of preaching as a very small affair, and 
both as standing in contrast with what they would 
be pleased to have considered as the liberal arts. 

Does the history of the mental development 
and practical life of Paul, or any other Christian, 
confirm that view ? 

Before proceeding to the direct investigation 
of that question, let us remind ourselves of cer- 
tain things grafted in the history of mind. It 
has been known that men have attempted to lib- 
eralize themselves by dipping into all the arts 
and sciences, having a little or much knowledge 
in every possible department, keeping the Ad- 
mirable Crichton for their model. It is fair to 
admit that such persons have become most pleas- 
ant society men, have been agreeable and enter- 
taining, and have made some figure while they 
lasted. But how long did they last ? What is 
the size of their figure and the weight of their 
influence a century after death ? Compare them 
with the men who have each taken some great 



field of intellectual labor and devoted their lives 
to it, and how small they seem. Compare this 
Admirable Crichton, just mentioned, with Co- 
pernicus, for instance. At seventeen years of 
age, the former is reputed to have mastered the 
whole circle of the sciences, to have been able 
to speak and write in ten different languages. 
He excelled in painting and fencing, in riding 
and dancing, in vocal and instrumental music. 
He had the most extraordinary strength and 
beauty. Before he was twenty he challenged 
the learned men of Europe to dispute with him 
in twelve different languages, on " any science, 
art, discipline, or faculty." He bore off the palm 
in this extraordinary trial. Many other things 
are told of this wonderful Scotchman, many be- 
ing undoubtedly fabulous, but all showing the 
great variety of his attainments. But was he a 
great character ? 

Almost twenty years before he was born there 
died in Prussia a simple-hearted Christian re- 
cluse, the astronomer Copernicus. In early life 
he conceived the idea of a new theory of the 
universe, the very opposite of that which had 
prevailed for twenty centuries. To the demon- 
stration of the sun-center theory of the solar sys- 
tem as opposed to the earth-center, this student, 
who went into society simply to preach and 
practise medicine among the poor, and who re- 
garded general conversation a waste of time, de- 
voted forty years of his life. In science, he de- 
termined to know nothing but the center of the 
system. He discovered and demonstrated it, 
and died with the last page of his book fresh 
from the press. But he had turned the whole 
current of human thought, he had revolution- 
ized science, and there is not a living man on 
earth to-day who does not reap the fruit of that 
forty years' devotion to one thought. From his 
labors men have been able to make navigation a 
wider science and a safer art, and thus build up 
such cities as London and New York. But what 
has Crichton done for the world ? His life per- 
ished like a splendid rainbow, while that of the 
one-ideaed Copernicus fell on all fields like fruc- 
tifying showers. 

Then Paul may have been right, on correct 



Are Christians Narrow? 



knowledge of the laws of thought, in selecting 
one single topic for study and preaching. He 
was not naturally a broad man ; rather narrow. 
His Pharisaic education had still more contracted 
him. He was of the "straitest sect" of the nar- 
rowest school of the most illiberal nation. He 
grew to be the deepest philosopher, the broadest 
humanitarian, the most practical business man, 
and most tender, happy, loving, and beloved 
man of his generation, and of his generation ex- 
erted the greatest influence on all succeeding 
times. 

Such, my brethren, I hold to be the effect of 
devotion to the knowledge of " Jesus Christ, and 
Him crucified," on any human soul. And these 
are just the elements of character which every 
man should desire to have developed in himself. 
It may do us good to take up these several top- 
ics and see, if we can, how it comes to pass that 
a profound, devoted, affectionate study of Jesus, 
in His character and offices, has this effect on 
the human character. 

I. God begat men with a desire to know. 
He could not be God if there was anything He 
did not know. We are sure that we are His 
children, because we inherit from Him a desire 
to know everything. If we were not finite we 
should know everything. As it is. all the best 
of the Father's children are perpetually engaged 
in seeking to know the fixed causes of the con- 
stantly changing phenomena of the universe, 
and to bring into a system all this knowledge, 
and to reduce this system to the last possible 
simplicity of unity. And this we call philos- 
ophy. 

The study of Jesus led Paul, and, dear breth- 
ren, will lead you and me, into the perception 
that the spiritual underlies all the physical, that 
the material is only the expression of the ideal, 
that there is a soul to the universe. It is in 
seeking to explain the existence of such a being 
as Jesus of Nazareth, and such a life as His, that 
we come to the underlying basis of the spiritual 
world. Matter could not do it all. Now, it is 
so that all questions of bodily and mental health 
and disease, of the moral forces of the universe, 
of the social questions of human life, of devel- 
opment and progress, are concerned with Jesus 
more than with any other one person or subject 
known to men. We begin to get at a rational 
cause for the existence of the universe at all. It 
is not, then, eternal. It was not, then, made 
for pomp, as a vain and ambitious emperor 
might on a plain create a crowded capital, splen- 
did with palaces and magnificent with parks. It 
had a cause. That cause was spiritual. The 



universe, then, is not an end. It is a means. 
It is the material for the realization of thought, 
the field for the operation of moral and spiritual 
forces. There begins to be the dawn of science. 
We are no longer to be mere empirics. The 
material is visible. The spiritual is unseen. The 
material changes. The spiritual is fixed. The 
material passes away. The spiritual is eternal. 
We are getting at causes. We are finding suf- 
ficient causes, commensurate with the effects 
and with probable original intentions on the part 
of the Great Creator. We are beginning to find 
a basis for our physical science. The spiritual 
and the material are not two parallel currents 
running side by side ; they make one. The 
natural cannot exist without the spiritual, and 
the spiritual demands the natural. Nature and 
supernature are the outside and the inside of the 
universe. The deity, the godness, of God ne- 
cessitated the things that have length, breadth, 
and thickness. 

We are now pushing forward and down and 
up in philosophy. We are simplifying, we are 
unifying. We have found causes. We have 
found One Cause. We have found a simple 
conception of the Creator bursting into myr- 
iads of splendid worlds. We can read the 
physical world aright only as we connect it with 
the spiritual. There was no astronomical sci- 
ence fit to be called such until such humble and 
wise and patient Christians as Copernicus and 
Galileo and Kepler and Newton, with their 
hearts in their brains and their brains in their 
eyes and their eyes straining after God, found 
the ponderous orbs floating on the bosom of the 
Creator asrichly-freighted ships on an immeas- 
urable sea. And now, in geology, chemistry, 
physiology, or any other branch of science, no 
man is a discoverer, no man is an enthusiastic 
teacher, who does not perform his experiments 
as a saint prays, and does not connect every atom 
of matter with the pulsations of the spiritual 
world. 

The same is true of the department of intel- 
lectual science. There is a cosmical science, 
There is a metacosmical, if my learned hearers 
will permit me humbly to suggest a word which 
is not yet, I believe, in the dictionary, to sug- 
gest that which traces all the products and har- 
mony of the universe to the first principles in 
the mind of God, as metaphysical science traces 
all kinds of knowledge to their first principles 
in the constitution of the mind of man. We 
have unified the cause : is the end one ? All 
the efforts of the human intellect, thus far, have 
gravitated toward the oneness of beginning and 



16 



Are Christians Narrow ? 



the oneness of end. For what, not as an orig- 
inating cause simply but also as a finality, was 
all this universe of worlds and men created? 
"For Him," said Paul, speaking of Jesus. 

For a moment suppose Paul mistaken in the 
centei, you must perceive how grandly he grew 
in all his intellectual and spiritual proportions 
upon discovering that there was a center, 
whether Jesus was that center or not. He was 
to physical and metaphysical, to cosmical and 
metacosmical science, what Copernicus was to 
astronomy. He simplified and unified. We 
have not yet found the center of the physical 
universe ; but we have found and demonstrated 
that there is a center to every system, that that 
center is moving around some other center, and 
we believe that there is one last, supreme, un- 
movable point, measurelessly far from our world, 
around which all worlds revolve. The man who 
shall skill to determine that exact spot shall 
wear the last, the grandest starry crown among 
the princes in the Court of Astronomy. Paul 
did more. Jesus was to him what an upheaved 
section of the earth is to the geologist, showing 
all the strata of the earth's crust. He saw the 
strata of the universe in Jesus. To know Him, 
in all He was and in all He did, would be to 
know the whole material universe. Science 
has no other basis so broad, philosophy has no 
other element so simplifying and unifying all 
the works of God. "The heavens declare the 
glory of God," but that glory "shines in the 
face of Jesus." For all that work which found 
its consummation on the cross of Christ all the 
other works of God were wrought. Believing 
and teaching this, Paul became the philosopher 
who lifted a light which is now the central splen- 
dor of all human intellectual efforts and results. 

2. This study of the crucified Jesus enlarged 
Paul, as it will enlarge you, my brother, into a 
broad, intelligent humanitarian. Recollect the 
age in which he lived, and the nation from 
whom he sprung. It was not an age of human- 
ity. Indeed, never had our race right views of 
the value of humanity before Jesus came. 

Greek culture had, it is true, brought about a 
respect for the possibilities of the body in the 
direction of symmetry, and of the intellect, in 
the development of the aesthetic or taste side of 
human nature. 

Roman culture had done nothing humanita- 
rian. It is true that some one tells the story, 
that when the famous verse of Terence, " I am 
a man, and nothing human I regard as foreign 
to myself," was repeated in the theater, it was 
received with a burst of applause by the Roman 



audience; but that always seemed to me the 
expression of startled surprise at such a concep- 
tion, rather than the shout of brother-hearts 
for that same multitude would sit in the amphi 
theater and see a hundred brawny fellow-me' 
"slaughtered to make a Roman holiday," th< 
very women never wincing at sight of atrocities 
which should have made the Emperor faint 
That very Emperor would sit upraised, and 
without a pang, receive the partings of the 
gladiators as they turned their faces to his 
throne and said: " Ccesar, morituri te salutant 
" Caesar, those about to die, salute you !" It 
was not man as man who had claims on their 
hearts. Romans were something, men nothing. 

Of all the people the Jews were the least 
humane. Jews were something, men nothing, 
Samaritans dogs, and Romans wild beasts. 
They would never respond to any generous sen- 
timent founded on the brotherhood of man. It 
was to be characteristic of Messiah's reign that 
then the Jews should put their heels on the 
necks of the nations. Jesus incensed his na- 
tion by lifting all men to the same plane of 
favor in the sight of the Heavenly Father, and 
making the individual man the most precious 
of all the precious things of earth. 

Paul believed that Jesus Christ, by the grace 
of God, tasted death for every man. He be- 
lieved that He was Christ, the Anointed, because 
He had received a setting-apart for this very 
purpose. He believed that He rightly bore the 
name " Jesus," because He should be the world's 
Saviour ; Saviour not of the Jews only, but also 
of the Gentiles. There is no view of humanity 
which so makes every man precious to every 
other man, as the doctrine that the Eternal God 
became flesh, that the Deity was incarnated, 
that love prompted this advent and this invest- 
ment of the Godhead with Manhood, and that 
love found its last greatest expression in a vol- 
untary suffering and self-sacrifice, made for 
every man, in which every man had an interest, 
and which, somehow, should bring good to every 
man. Fact or fable, it is the most stimulating 
and most noble and most broad of all proposi- 
tions. It takes in all there is of God and all 
there is of Man. It binds all parts in one. It 
is to the heart of man what the doctrine of uni- 
versal gravitation is to his intellect. The latter 
is the simplifying, unifying scientific idea of the 
head, the other ^is the simplifying, unifying, 
harmonious sentiment of the heart. They are 
counterparts. All the atoms of the whole ma- 
terial world rush toward one another, because 
they rush toward the centra. All the individual 



/ 



Are Christians Narrow ? 



17 



hearts of our whole humanity rush toward one 
another just as all feel the attraction of the Lov- 
ing, Crucified One. 

Point me to any other basis of philanthrophy 
which is equal to that. Why should I love all 
men ? Some of thern are hateful enough, and 
some of them hate me : why should I love them 
all? If you tell me, Because God made us all; 
then I reply, So did He make horses and dogs; 
and I know some horses and dogs that seem to 
have more sense and better temper than some 
men and women. There must be some deeper 
and stronger reason than that, some bond of 
love that is strong. Here it is supplied. Jesus 
is the very highest possible conception of com- 
plete and perfect manhood. He is the brother 
of each and every man equally. In His life and 
death each man has precisely the same interest 
as every other man. What makes me at all an 
interesting object in the universe ? It is not 
mere existence and individuality and identity. 
It is that I am personally born of God, His son, 
and am loved by Him and am capable of feeling 
and returning that love. Jesus taught me that. 
Jesus established for me the brotherhood of 
man by notifying to me the Fatherhood of God. 
What He has done for me, Jesus has equally 
done for each other member of my race. 

Far above all considerations of what any man 
is, or has been, or may become, is this crowning 
fact, that for that man the Son of God lived and 
died on earth. This is Paul's reason for adding 
and emphasizing the phrase "and Him cruci- 
fied." It was not simply the teaching and mir- 
acle-working Jesus whom he had determined to 
know, but the Jesus who was capable of giving 
love's supreme proof to the world in His volun- 
tary self-offering, a propitiation for our sins, and 
not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole 
world. Now, no matter how bad any man may 
be, Jesus knew it all, and loved him and died 
for him. 

It is on God's philanthropy I must found mine : 
otherwise it will be most defective. Such, his- 
tory shows, is the philanthropy which does not 
come from the knowledge of Christ crucified. 
The class A will kill the class B out of "philan- 
thropy" to the class C. It will always be found 
that this is a false philanthropy. There is an- 
other motive : for philanthropy is love to man 
as man, irrespective of opinions and qualities ; 
and the class B are men as much as the class C. 
Paul was lifted to that broad love for man, by 
refusing to know among his brethren anything 
except their relation to Him who had loved them 
and given himself for them, the Just for the un- 



just, to bring them to God. The more he knew 
of that love the more a humanitarian he became, 
until the distinction between Jew and Gentile, 
between Greek and barbarian, between bond 
and free, between male and female, lost itself in 
the great fact of Man, in the great fact that Man 
was the object of the love of the Heavenly Father 
as taught by the dying Redeemer. 

3. At first sight it might seem strange that 
devoting one's self to the knowledge of Jesus 
Christ, and Him crucified, should make practical 
business-men more than any other culture ; and 
yet, in fact, it is so : and if, in fact, it be so, we 
must suppose that there is a reason for it in the 
nature of things. Let us see if we can find the 
reason. 

We shall find great diversity of opinion as to 
what constitutes a good practical business-man. 
He is not such certainly who does not in the be- 
ginning set before himself distinctly an end worth 
the devotion of his life, — nor he who does not 
use the methods reasonably adapted to the gain- 
ing of that end, — nor he who does not push his 
work by sustained efforts to its legitimate con- 
clusion, — nor he who does not promote the gen- 
eral weal in gaining his own ends. Some of you 
are great merchants, a few of world-wide fame. 
I appeal to you : is not that last statement cor- 
rect ? However great energies a man may have, 
if he throw them upon the market pell-mell, 
pushing the world all around him, stirring things 
with a promiscuous rush, he certainly cannot be 
called a practical business-man. He is a steamer 
of great power, but rudderless. He is consigned 
and steered to no port. Nor, if a man shall 
have set his aims and determined his ends, is he 
a practical business-man if he vaguely hopes they 
will accomplish themselves or come to pass with- 
out the use of those methods which men know 
will produce such results. He is a dreamer, who 
counts his gold only in visions. Nor, if a man 
show great strength and sagacity by fits and 
starts, is he a practical business-man. He is 
spasmodic. He affects his connections as a loco- 
motive does the passengers in the train when it 
takes them forward by jerks and strains. Nor, 
if a man gain his ends, and leave commercial 
circles and the general community no better, but 
rather worse, for his operations, is he a good 
practical business-man. He is an acute, selfish, 
perhaps successful operator: that is all. 

Out of all these classes does a knowledge of 
Jesus, and Him crucified, lift business-men. They 
no longer set their aims to be the mere accumu- 
lation of money as an end. It is to them a 
means. They watch its growth and study its 



18 



Are Christians Marrow ? 



capabilities. The highest end of life is to live 
nobly and usefully — nobly, at least, if not use- 
fully. If money have any power to increase a 
man's nobility, they study that and seek to em- 
ploy it on themselves and their children. They, 
therefore, never become slaves to business, but 
keep business servant to all the highest interests 
of themselves and their children. Believing in 
a spiritual world, in the superiority of that to 
the material world, and yet greatly and rightly 
valuing the material world for its uses ; believing 
in the love of God for him and his fellow-men, 
and that business is one of God's shuttles where- 
with He weaves the web of brotherhood ; having 
no purely personal ends to subserve, his pas- 
sions are calm, he can do work for the Master 
with all his powers unperturbed. He can never 
fail, in the worst sense of that frightful word. 

The knowledge of Christ crucified lifts all men 
in the love of a Christian business-man. He 
knows that no matter how many millions he 
might accumulate, if he left society injured by 
his operations, he should not be accounted a good 
practical business-man. No trade is good which 
does not profit both buyer and seller. The world 
has not gained by a transaction in which one is 
enriched by the impoverishment of another. 
And " God so loved the world that He gave His 
only-begotten Son." ■ And Christians must so 
love the world. And this love for " the world" 
gives broadest, largest, deepest views of all the 
world's interests, and widens the range of vision 
of the Christian business- man. 

Then, there is another view. This crucified 
Jesus "brought life and immortality to light." 
All life is made more practical. We are not 
groping in the dark any longer. We see just 
what we are to live for. All life is also made 
more grand by being set with immortality in the 
light. Our dirtiest shops and busiest counting- 
houses and most important banks become 
grandly solemn when we reflect that these trans- 
actions have no "clearing-house" in the grave, 
but go forward into eternity ; that every act of 
business will be busy forever, modifying all 
things, everywhere, perpetually. No man can 
afford to "fool" with business whose knowledge 
of the crucified Christ has given him assurance 
of his own immortality. 

It was just such culture that made Paul one of 
the most practical of men. Full of business, 
never idle, never hurried, "the care of all the 
churches" on him, study and trouble and work 
always pressing, he succeeded in organizing 
Christian societies whose existence has long since 
closed, but whose influence will go on forever. 



So, dear brethren, those men who make a busi- 
ness of their religion and a religion of their 
business, not regarding the up-town church as 
the only place for religion and the down-town 
store as the only place for business, — these men, 
by the knowledge of the crucified Jesus, become 
the greatest, the best, the most practical business- 
men. This text, " ! determine to know nothing 
among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified," 
is as good a motto for your counting-house as for 
my study, for the merchants as for the preachers. 

4. Lastly. It was this knowledge which made 
Paul a tender, happy man, loving and beloved 
in his generation. Paul does not seem to have 
been an amiable man naturally. He was rather 
hard in the grain of his character. His education 
had not mended that. And in reading his his- 
tory and his works, one can scarcely refrain from 
feeling that he had, early in life, been unfor- 
tunately and uncongenially married, although if 
that was the fact, it is obscured in the narrative. 
From being the hard, ambitious student of 
Gamaliel, and instrument of the Sanhedrin, how 
tender he became ! How he loved his friends 
and the churches and the world ! The cross 
had softened him. If Jesus was the Christ, 
anointed for the world, how the Father must 
love the whole family. If Jesus went to cruci- 
fixion, humbling himself even to the death of the 
cross, how tenderly would Paul's eyes look upon 
all who were subjects of such human and celestial 
love. He did not preach the Gospel on a cold 
sense of duty. He loved to proclaim Jesus. He 
worked for a support when it was necessary, that 
he might have this blessed privilege. He magni- 
fied his office. He was all the sweeter for being 
so strong. Those natures that are sweetish are 
not quite sweet ; but when great, grave, powerful 
men, carrying weights, working prodigiously for 
the accomplishment of great results, — when they 
are tender, gentle, and good, how sweet is their 
heroic tenderness, gentleness, and goodness ! 

Such was Paul. His love begat love. Read 
the salutations in his letters. See what friends 
he made. In Corinth there were Stephanas and 
Fortunatus and Achaiacus; — and there were 
Tychichus, a brother beloved ; and the slave 
Onesimus, "a faithful and beloved brother;" and 
his owner, Philemon, a dearly beloved fellow- 
laborer ; and Aristarchus, Paul's fellow-prisoner ; 
and Mark, Barnabas's nephew ; and Epaphras of 
Colosse ; and Luke, the beloved physician ; and 
Nymphas, who had a church in his house ; and 
Aquila and his wife Priscilla ; and the whole 
family of Onesiphorus, at Rome, who were not 
ashamed of Paul's chains, but sought him out 



Are Christians Narrow? 



19 



and refreshed him with their ministration ; and 
the beloved Apphia ; and Phebe, " our sister, a 
servant of the church at Cenchrea ; " and Androni- 
cus and Junia ; and Amplias and Urbane and 
Strachys, the household of Aristobulus and 
Narcissus; and Rufus, "chosen in the Lord," 
whose mother Paul tenderly calls his ; and Tryph- 
enaandTryphosa; andPersis; and the company 
of Asyncritus, Plegan, Hermas, Patrolus, and 
Hermes ; andPhilologus, withjulia; and Timothy, 
his son in the Gospel ; and Marcus, with his sister 
Olympas ; and Epenetus — all beloved, all named 
in his epistles, with others whose names have 
perhaps escaped me, but who are written in the 
Book of Life and in the heart of Paul : men, 
women, and children, people of rank, and of low 
life, slaves and their owners, learned and illit- 
erate, what an array of friends whom Paul had 
learned to love, and who had learned to love 
him. 

And now, dear brethren, consider this case. 
Here was a man born in a province, taught in a 
sectarian school, reared under every political 
and ecclesiastical influence calculated to cramp 
and embitter him, driven from his own people 
at last and killed by their conquerors after years 
of persecution. This man became a profound 
philosopher, a wide and consistent philanthro- 
pist, a man of great practical business capabil- 
ities, and a tender, noble gentleman, by drop- 
ping his ecclesiasticism, turning from all the 
philosophies which at his time were considered 
liberalizing, and devoting himself in thought 
and affection and life to the study, the love, the 
worship, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, 
and Him crucified. No other culture ever made 
such results. Will you now dare tell me that 
Christianity is not liberal, that Christians are 
narrow, that the religion we preach to you is in 
the way of human progress or individual ad- 
vancement ? Will you content yourself with 
any smaller results when these are at your com- 
mand ? Will you desire your ministers to find 
other themes, when Jesus crucified touches all 
that is important in heaven and earth ? What 
else should we preach Vhan what we know ? 
Remember that not a solitary worker in society 
during the past thousand years has set humanity 
forward an inch who has not, like Paul, deter- 
mined to know nothing among men except 
Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. Whatsoever 
knowledge or work does not lead us to this 
knowledge, will prove worthless to our souls, 
and perish. Other knowledge may vanish away, 
but the knowledge of Jesus endures forever. 
Therefore the Great Master himself has taught 



us that this is perpetual life, to know God and 
Him whom God hath sent. Life to the brain, 
life to the heart, life to the life, there is no 
knowledge like knowing the Crucified. 

Come, ye students, whose ambition seeks *to 
explore every field of human knowledge, and 
stand with me at the gates of eternity. It is 
Examination Day for graduating into the higher 
classes of the unseen world. "What knowledge 
have you gained during your mortal life ?" is 
the test question. See what crowds of young 
and old, what grave and tall and reverend heads 
are there, what simple people and what great ! 
Hear their replies. One says, " I have learned 
the languages, Latin and Greek and Hebrew 
and Sanscrit, all that conveyed the wisdom of 
the ancients to their successors ; and I have 
learned them to their roots, down the seeds of 
earliest speech." Another says: "I have ac- 
quired the principles of all physical science, have 
explored the planets and comprehended the 
Cosmos." Another says: "I have mastered 
the principles of political science, so that I have 
learned to govern empires and lead peoples in 
splendid processions up the highways of ma- 
terial prosperity." Another says: "I have 
wooed and won every Muse, and become ruler 
in the palace of Art : and Form and Color and 
Sound have become my obedient vassals." 
Alas ! there stand a poor widow and her little 
child. In the presence of such greatness they 
blush and are abashed. They feel that these 
great men have fitted themselves, in some 
measure, to pass into the skies. " And you," 
says the Angel of the gate, " what have you 
learned ?" The mother bursts into tears and 
stammers out, " We don't know any of these 
things. We are not learned. We only know 
that Jesus was crucified for us." And the in- 
nocent child bursts into one of his Sunday- 
school songs, that which these orphan children 
who fill the seats at both sides of me sang here 
a few Sundays ago — 

" Jesus loves me, that I know, 
For the Bible tells me so !" 

See ! the gates fly open. The great Apostle ta 
the Gentiles seizes the poor woman and humble 
child in loving embrace, and the Angel of the 
Examination passes them up to the higher 
forms of the school of Christ, while Paul assures 
them that he had determined to know nothing 
on earth save Christ, and Him crucified, and 
that he had found nothing else worth knowing 
in all the heavens, in all the centuries of his de- 
votion to whatsoever there was to be learned in 
eternity. 



III. 



"FOR when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach 

YOU AGAIN WHICH BE THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF THE ORACLES OF GOD ; AND ARE BECOME 
SUCH AS HAVE NEED OF MILK AND NOT OF STRONG MEAT. FOR EVERY ONE THAT USETH MILK 
IS UNSKILLFUL IN THE WORD OF RIGHTEOUSNESS ; FOR HE IS A BABE. BUT STRONG MEAT 
BELONGETH TO THEM THAT ARE OF FULL AGE, EVEN THOSE WHO BY REASON OF USE HAVE 
THEIR SENSES EXERCISED TO DISCERN GOOD AND EVIL." — HEBREWS, V. 12, 13, 14. 



Paul was specially strong in his advocacy of 
knowledge, and his detestation of willful igno- 
rance. If any man ever taught that " ignorance 
is the mother of devotion," it was not Paul. 
If any man ever endeavored to retain a priestly 
hold upon a people by cultivating himself as 
much as possible and keeping them in igno- 
rance, it was not Paul. In writing to the Philip- 
pians (i. 9), he says : " This, I pray, that your 
love may abound more and more in knowledge 
and in all judgment" He speaks of the Colos- 
sians (iii. 10) as having " put on the new man, 
which is renewed in knowledge after the image 
of Him that created him." He rejoices in the 
Romans (xv. 14), being persuaded of them that 
they "are full of goodness, filled with all 
knowledge." He speaks of the Corinthians 
(2 Cor. viii. 7) as "abounding in faith, and 
utterance, and knowledge." Other passages 
might be quoted from his writings, but these 
show how Paul connected knowledge with re- 
generation, with gracefulness of heart and de- 
meanor, and with usefulness of life. 

Nor was Peter less a believer in knowledge. 
The very first acquirement, after faith, is cour- 
age, and the next, after courage, is knowledge. 
"Add to your virtue (courage) knowledge ," is 
the exhortation of this Apostle (2 Peter, i. 5), 
and then he exhorts us (iii. 8) to " grow in 
grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and 
Saviour," intimating that no one shall grow in 
grace who does not grow in knowledge. 

No man who believes that he has a truth in 
hand feels any encouragement to present it to 
one whose mind is empty of knowledge. The 
more knowledge one has in any department the 
more ready is he to comprehend and appreciate 
discoveries in that department. The enthusiastic 
inventor has his zeal dampened when he finds 
that he is attempting to explain his wonderful 
invention to a man who is totally ignorant of 
the first principles of mechanics. To him who 



knows nothing of mathematics, or speculative 
astronomy, or chemistry, what splendor is there 
in the discoveries of Leverrier or Faraday ? 
It is just so that want of knowledge in the 
hearer dampens the zeal of the preacher. Paul 
was on the full stretch of an argument on the 
priesthood of Christ when he was suddenly ar- 
rested, in mid-career, by the recollection of the 
want of knowledge in those to whom he was 
writing. He stops to complain that they "are 
dull of hearing," that when they should be feed- 
ing on meat they are drinking milk, that when 
they should be teachers they need to be taught 
first principles, and when they should be men 
they are babes. 

We modern and feeble followers of the 
Apostles feel the same drawback. I have before 
admitted to you, my brethren, that I believe 
there is much very inapt, crude, and stupid 
preaching ; but I have at the same time insisted 
that there is vastly more stupid hearing, and the 
failure of great effects in preaching is not so 
much due to the pulpit as to the pew. The 
man who preaches must know something : he 
must study, he must make some preparation. 
No man but a fanatic ever attempts to talk about 
that of which he is conscious of knowing nothing. 
But do you not undertake to listen to discourses 
in departments of thought to which you have 
given no attention ? And do you not suppose 
that that is exceedingly discouraging to your 
pastor ? If you endeavor to render your minds 
receptive as he tries to render his impartive, 
would there not be better success in preaching ? 
Did you ever try to kindle fires ? Do you recol- 
lect that it was not so easy to make green wood 
burn as it was to kindle dry wood ? An igno- 
rant hearer in a church is like a wet log laid on 
the fire, that sobs and simmers and frets through 
a long process before it becomes dry enough to 
kindle. There is a contest between the log and 
the fire, whether the fire shall kindle the log or 



Meat for Men. 



21 



the log shall extinguish the fire. Just so it is 
when an earnest minister has to deal with an 
ignorant congregation. And, indeed, it may 
not be a congregation ignorant of science and 
art and literature and politics and business. It 
may be greatly learned in all these departments 
and yet ignorant of spiritual things. It is all 
the more painful when this ignorance of the 
highest things is found with learning in lower 
departments. 

I have come to-day to urge you, the people of 
my congregation, to lift yourselves out of this 
lowness to a higher plane, to take time from less 
important things and devote it to what is indis- 
pensable, to learn to feel that it is quite as neces- 
sary for you to prepare to hear as it is for me to 
prepare to preach. We shall then come to- 
gether, spark and tinder, fire and dry wood; 
and then the flames on our altar shall gladden 
us as they go grandly up toward heaven. 

There must be some fountain of spiritual 
knowledge. The oracles of God are the only 
source of that knowledge. Our knowledge of 
matter is gained from the study of the proper- 
ties of matter; our knowledge of the laws 
of mind is gained by the study of the human 
intellect ; .our knowledge of spiritual things by 
a study of God's Spirit. For physical science 
the material universe is the field ; for mental 
science the intellectual constitution of man ; for 
spiritual science the mind of the Spirit in the 
word of God. And all these several depart- 
ments are perfectly harmonious. There could 
not possibly be a discovery in what is called 
physical science which conflicts with any properly 
ascertained law of human mental operations, 
not any of these laws which conflict with the 
Infinite Mind. Our conception of God necessi- 
tates our belief in the oneness of all creation 
and the perfect harmony of all its parts. All 
true religious knowledge is in perfect consistency 
with Pure Reason ; not perhaps your reasoning, 
nor mine, but with the Last Reason, God's sub- 
lime power of keeping hold of all thoughts and 
keeping all thoughts held in their relationships. 

Now, just as there is a progressive system in 
any other department of knowledge, in nature 
and in mind, by which we can ascend from 
simplest facts to their complex connections, and 
from these connections to generalizations which 
we call laws, so there is a progressive system of 
vruth in the Bible. Religious knowledge must 
be progressive. We ought to know more than 
our fathers, the moderns more than the ancients. 

And this does not necessitate the making of a 
new revelation. A book written on geology a 



quarter of a century ago is absolutely worthless 
now, except as a mile-stone, far behind, to show 
the progress of later investigations. So of 
chemistry, botany, astronomy. Yet these do 
not necessitate the idea of fresh creations. The 
atoms, the affinities, the plants, the rocks, the 
stones are the same that they have been for 
thousands of years ; but our acquirements in the 
knowledge of all these is perpetually enlarging. 
The records of God's mind in the Bible need no 
appendix or addition, yet the workers in this field 
will expand the area of religious knowledge as 
long as the Bible and the human mind co-exist in 
the universe, just as astronomy will extend its 
domain so long as the mind of man co-exists 
with God's multitudinous stars. 

In the sixth chapter of this epistle Paul pre- 
sents three couplets of elements of all religion, 
Jewish and Christian, namely, repentance and 
faith, baptism and laying on of hands, resurrec- 
tion of the dead and eternal judgment. These 
are easily comprehended. But there is a greater, 
deeper, more important and more influential 
doctrine than these all, namely, the priesthood 
of the Lord Jesus Christ, which underlies all 
those others and gives them animation ; without 
which indeed all those others are inert and 
worthless. There are mysteries in the physical 
world which probably will never be unveiled by 
the mightiest effort of the human intellect, such 
as the simplest form of the lowest animal life. 
There is a mystery in the human intellect, such 
.as its apparent locality in one individual's con- 
scious existence, combined with its apparent 
excursive capability of being in an instant pres- 
ent at a distant fixed star. And there is an 
inscrutable mystery in the connection between 
mind and matter. So there is a mystery in the 
existence of operation of spirit. It is a sublime, 
a " great mystery of godliness." But our chief 
intellectual joys and our main intellectual suc- 
cesses come from our efforts to unveil the mystery, 
however unsuccessful these efforts are. 

So of the deepest things in the spiritual de- 
partment. The prophets, men of mightiest pen- 
etration, men whose minds God had made like 
red-hot augers, burning as they pierced, have 
searched these things diligently. The angels, 
the brightest intelligences, standing in the high- 
est illumination of eternity, have desired to look 
into them. The best and noblest employment 
of any man's power is the search after the truth 
as it is in Jesus. 

A profound knowledge of divine truth of 
course includes being grounded in the first prin- 
ciples and never abandoning them. When Paul 



Meat for Men. 



speaks of " leaving the first principles of Christ," 
he certainly cannot mean the abandoning of 
them, any more than a student in the highest 
departments of pure or applied mathematics 
abandons his multiplication table, although in 
one sense he has left it far behind ; or any more 
than a vine abandons the earth, although it has 
left it and gone climbing up to the topmost 
branch of the tree. 

Repentance and faith, the changing one's 
mind and affections and placing them on Jesus; 
baptism, which may mean the many washings of 
the Jews or the various forms in which Christians 
signify their belief in the death and resurrection 
of Jesus ; and laying on of hands, which may 
signify the placing of the hand of the sinner on 
the head of the sacrifice, or any ceremonial by 
which one is acknowledged by his brethren to 
be in complete fellowship with the followers of 
Jesus ; the resurrection of the dead and eternal 
judgment, that is to say, the continuance of ex- 
istence after death and the perpetuity of individ- 
ual moral responsibility ; — these are the mere 
elements, the alphabet of the science of religion. 
If a man rest on them he is to be a neophyte and 
a babe forever. 

There is a deeper knowledge, some explica- 
tion of which Paul gives in this epistle ; it is a 
knowledge of the relation of each elementary 
truth to the solitary and perpetual priesthood 
of our Lord Jesus Christ. Every truth in the 
whole range of knowledge, man's or God's, has 
its own intrinsic value ; but every truth has also 
another value which comes to it from its connec- 
tion with the entire universal system of truths. 
That there is such a connection all our discov- 
eries go to prove. A lower system may revolve 
with other systems around a common center. 
Each of these lower systems is characterized by 
its center and the entire mass by the common 
center. In studying any science we must know 
what is the central truth. The whole scheme of 
the science, with all its subordinate truths and 
principles, depends upon that. One great trouble 
with Christian students is that they devote them- 
selves to some one truth, which is certainly truth, 
but which they study segregated from its con- 
nections, and especially not regarded as depend- 
ing upon a central truth. 

There is just as much a science of Supernature 
as there is a science of Nature ; but it is as absurd 
to complain that the Bible was not written scien- 
tifically, in an orderly body of dogmatic theology, 
as to complain that the book of Nature was not 
written scientifically, that is, all the plants ar- 
ranged in growth, in parterres and strips, like rib- 



bons, and the animals set along as they are ar- 
ranged in the great cabinets of Natural History. 
No, let God be praised forever that He did not 
make this world after the stiff pattern of a Dutch 
garden, but flung the beauties all about, giving 
man's mind the capability of educing the scien- 
tific system from this apparently promiscuous 
prodigality of God's creation. Just so He made 
the Bible; history and prophecy and song and 
drama and letter. There is a string of truth 
on which they are strung, a principle moving 
through them all. It is our business to discover 
that principle, and not to content ourselves with 
being amused at the phenomena of individual 
truths, and not destroy our intellectual symmetry 
and equipoise by incessant devotion to a truth 
separated from all its connections. 

The importance of cultivating a profound 
knowledge of the highest and deepest truths 
may be brought home to us by the following 
considerations : 

i. It is a sin to neglect any part of God's ora- 
cles. If the Bible be the word of God, if it 
contain " the mind of the Spirit," then to neg- 
lect any portion manifests a disrespect for the 
authority of God which must seriously weaken 
any man's moral constitution. In the instruc- 
tions which a subject receives from his king the 
royal authority is as much in every part as it is 
in any part. To select portions for study and 
obedience is to be disobedient, as it is the setting 
up of our individual private judgment against 
the wisdom and the will of the infinite Heavenly 
Father. It furthermore argues a want of love 
for truth. This love for truth it is indispensable 
to cultivate. It is really more important than a 
nervous carefulness to be exact in all our state* 
ments and accurate in the use of our words. 

There is a class of precise people who are 
most deliberate and careful in their speeches, 
but have not the slightest love for the truth, and 
are governed simply by a fear of their personal 
safety, having been raised upon such moral food 
as " honesty is the best policy." No man must 
be able to detect the slighest divergence of their 
statements from the "facts in the case," but when 
they have " said their say" they have no care 
whatever as to whether the falsehood or the truth 
prevail. Theirs is a dead truthfulness, an exact 
corpse whose animating soul of truth has fled. 
How often we have seen such people in our 
courts of law and even unfortunately in our 
church councils. A liberalness that is not ani- 
mated by a vivid love for the' truth is worse than 
worthless ; it is a deceiving counterfeit of the 
truth. Devotion to the whole system of truth 



Meat for Men. 



28 



in the Bible develops one's love for all truth so 
as to ennoble and purify and enrich the entire 
character. 

2. Profound spiritual knowledge is necessary 
in order to teach others. Every man is a teacher 
whether he will be or not; but every man ought 
to feel the importance and privilege of being 
able to give his fellow-man some help, how- 
ever small, out of the darkness into the light. 
It is not only the duty of preachers and profes- 
sors and editors and authors to teach, but 
parents owe it to their children, and every man 
and woman in the conversation of society to 
every other man or woman. It is a wretched 
superficiality which makes our social intercourse 
so stale and flat and unprofitable. This is the 
reason why our humanity climbs the hill of 
progress at so slow a pace, there is such a weight 
to carry, so many thousands contribute nothing 
to the advancement, spending their lives in mere 
twaddle and intellectual inanities. If each man 
would devote only a small portion of his time to 
the acquisition of a profounder knowledge of the 
divinest things, it would so operate on all his 
modes of thought and speech that all science, 
art, literature, politics, trade, and manners 
would be set in more beautiful lights and become 
fresher and sweeter. It would not make life 
rigid. Nothing makes a man so stiff as igno- 
rance. It would touch the loveliest valleys of 
thought and sentiment with fingers of light 
stretched down from the central sun. If not 
able to teach the truth we should thus be very 
able to teach the love of the truth. We should 
at least not be damaging our fellow-men with 
those half-truths which are falsehoods. 

3. It is necessary to keep us in times when 
false doctrines are influential. The examination 
of doctrines will go on so long as there remains 
any vigor in the human intellect. Men will 
look at the attractive. We must employ our 
active faculties somehow. Nothing is too sacred 
for the human reason to touch. The great 
trouble with us is that men are impatient in their 
studies and not willing to work long enough 
to become profound. They throw their crude 
conjectures out as if they were the well-ascer- 
tained decisions of their judgment and the well- 
digested conclusions of their reason. And others, 
still more impatient or incapable, accept them 
and teach them, and this teaching confirms the 
teachers in their error, and thus the fluid error 
crystallizes. 

There is no system altogether erroneous. 
There is no heresy which has not some truth in 
it. It could not otherwise endure a day. After 



all that is said of our poor human nature men 
do not love error because it is error but because 
they mistake it for truth. It is thus that false 
doctrines prevail : they seem so true. In the 
times of the prevalence of such false doctrines 
there are two things important : one is to save 
ourselves, and the other is to save our fellow- 
men. No strength of our own will save us. 
When the storm bursts all loose vessels are 
driven about, however large and strong they 
may be. We must be anchored. We must 
have connections " within the veil." When the 
high winds blow over the land, the feathers and' 
chips and all light things are lifted and tossed, 
and the weather-vanes on steeples are swung 
round and round; but the mountains stand. 
The storm may be so fierce as to start great 
holders down the mountain-side and wrench the 
trees from t,heir strong roots ; but the everlast- 
ing mountains stand. So, Christian men should 
not be carried about by every wind of doctrine, 
as feathers ; but should stand and turn the winds 
as the mountains do. We must be ready to 
give a reason for the hope that is in us. 

It does not require great acquisitions of worldly 
learning to become profoundly versed in spiritual 
things. A simple, obedient, trusting heart, going 
unaffectedly to the Eternal Spirit of truth, will 
be led to such knowledge of the key-truth as 
will enable him to unlock all the caskets as he 
comes to them. This explains what may have 
at sometime puzzled you, the fact that learned 
professors and clergymen are often carried away 
with foolish theories and heresies, while the un- 
lettered child of God keeps to the faith once 
delivered to the saints. It is because this latter 
clings to the truth as it is in Jesus, the inner- 
most central truth of the universe. To such a 
man others, who have not been able as yet to 
reach that foundation, may hold and be saved. 
I think you will be delighted in the day of the 
revelation when you discover how many men of 
genius and learning have been saved by holding 
to the simple faith of their plain wives and art- 
less children until they reached the great cen- 
tral truth. Human learning does not necessarily 
keep us from the most profound knowledge of 
divine things. It should rather lead us thereto. 
It is our fault if it do not. And if it do not, 
then, instead of anchoring us and thus saving 
us, it overloads us and sinks us, and thus destroys 
us. 

4. The profounder one's knowledge of the 
greatest divine truths the greater one's humility. 
Humility is not a mean virtue. It does not 
lead a man to undervalue himself; but it does 



Meat for Men. 



help him from the folly of overvaluing himself, 
and thus getting to himself the whole universe 
out of proportion. The humblest of all the 
students in any college is generally found to be 
the most wise and learned teacher. A broad 
awe comes over any one who often stands face 
to face with the loftiest and widest and most 
fixed of all the solemnities. He cannot be 
puffed up. He may be gentle and playful and 
tender, but he cannot be proud. If all a man 
knows of the Bible is the original tongues in 
which it was written, its history, its chronol- 
ogy, its literature, he may be a self-conceited 
sciolist ; but when he comes to know Him for 
whom were all things and by whom are all 
things, he falls naturally into his place, and the 
things that are seen and temporal will yield in 
his estimation to the things which are unseen 
and eternal, and he becomes simple in his love 
for the truth, especially of the commanding 
truth of the universe. 

5. This profound knowledge of divine truth 
increases the lovingness of a man's nature. 
Knowledge and love are twins. It was a pagan 
idea that love should be a blind god. No eyes 
quicker than the eyes of love to see all that is 
good and sweet in the beloved. The Christian 
idea is expressed by Paul (Phil. i. 9) in his 
saying to the Philippians : "And this I pray, 
that your love may abound more and more in 
knowledge and in all judgment." It is only the 
false and meretricious which perishes as we know 
it better. Familiarity breeds contempt only 
among the contemptible. The adage is that a 
man is never a hero to his own valet. This is 
true of such men as are in reality no heroes at 
all. 

A man, like anything else, has an intrinsic 
value. The more that is known the more the 
man must be appreciated. He has also a rela- 
tive value. The more that is known the more 
the man is valued. The profounder our knowl- 
edge of divine things the more we care to know 
the intrinsic and relative value of God and man 
and men, and the more precious the whole uni- 
verse, with all its parts, become to us. It is dis- 
ease which makes a man's head grow out of 
proportion to his heart. A man may have 
spiritual hydrocephalus, in which the head is 
filled and swollen with water and not with 
brains. The more we know the beautiful, the 
sublime, and the good, the better, the sublimer, 
the more beautiful they become to us. 

6. Sectarianism owes its existence to a want 
of knowledge of the highest central truths. A 
sect comes of a disproportionate attention to 



some section of the great circle of truth. Some 
doctrine, some sacrament, some principle, true 
in itself, but only part of the truth, certainly not 
the great governing truth, is taken as the par- 
amount center of the whole Christian system. 
The more a man knows of the truth the more 
churches he belongs to ; and when a man comes 
to a clear perception and a profound appreciation 
of the whole truth as it is in Jesus, he finds no 
difficulty in belonging to all the churches. The 
true "catholic church" is that which embraces 
all who have any truth. We have the pleasure 
in this day of seeing the sects coming together. 
There is a better feeling. The courtesies mul- 
tiply. Forbearance increases. Now all this may 
come of one or two things : indifference to all 
truth or increasing love for the chief truths. If 
it be the former, it will rest in the mere conven- 
tiality of society, and Christians will more and 
more treat one another like gentlemen ; but 
if it be the latter, it will strike down into the very 
roots of our nature, and Christians will treat one 
another more and more like brethren. It must 
needs be that there be many churches, but they 
need not be sects ; none need feel that the others 
are wrong because they are right, nor that the 
others are not churches because they themselves 
are. They need not clash. Each orb of our 
solar system sails majestically on its vast voyage, 
held by the power of the central sun. It does 
not keep its place by any strength of will in 
itself. It is not the whole system. Yet it has 
its individuality. As it is not necessary that all 
the planets with their satellites should be rolled 
into one globe to secure the unity of the system, 
so it is not necessary that all the churches 
should be rolled into one " denomination" to 
secure the unity of the body of Christ. Deep 
knowledge of the highest spiritual things is to 
all Christians a law of gravitation, keeping them 
in their orbit. 

7. The oracles of God are the instruments of 
our personal sanctification. We hear much of 
sanctification in some circles, and much that is 
worse than nonsense. All Christians believe 
that we must become holy in our very inmost 
natures. How is a man to be thus sanctified? 
What means must he employ to accomplish this 
unspeakably desirable thing ? I will not answer 
in my own words, nor even in the words of reli- 
gious teachers who are held, and justly held, in 
affectionate respect for the sanctity of their own 
lives. But surely Peter knew, and he says : 
" Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying 
the truth through the spirit." Surely St. Paul 
knew, and he says : " Now yield your members 



Meat for Men. 



25 



servants to righteousness unto holiness." Surely 
our Blessed Saviour knew, and He says, in pray- 
ing to His Father for His disciples, " Sanctify 
them through Thy truth : Thy word is truth." 

It is quite apparent that none of these great- 
est leaders of religion taught anything like 
some of our modern ideas of sanctification. 
The Spirit of God in the Word of God does all 
this work on willing souls. It is not done in a 
moment. The beginning is instantaneous and 
the end, but the intermediate work may occupy 
a life. We are, through the Spirit, to learn the 
truth ; and this truth will show us what is right- 
eousness, the right ; and we are to purify our 
spirits, not by some supposed act of consecra- 
tion in a moment of enthusiasm, however hon- 
est and good that enthusiasm may be, but by 
constant obedience to the truth by the aid of the 
Spirit of God. Even Jesus knew no other way 
to sanctification. It is by the operation of God's 
truth, as contained in God's Word, on the heart 
and life, through the intellect, that men are 
sanctified. We can yield our bodies to holiness 
only through righteousness, and the Word of 
God is the directory of right, and the Spirit of 
God is the guide. This is the scheme of Jesus 
and Peter and Paul ; any other must be fanati- 
cism. 

Lastly, our surest present enjoyment and our 
happiest views of the future of the church de- 
pend on our knowledge of the truth as it is in 
Jesus. The more a Christian knows of the 
greatness and goodness and wisdom and love of 
Jesus, of all the grace that is to come to him in 
this world, and all the glory that is to come to 
him in the eternal world, through Jesus, the 
more his happiness deepens. Paul knew the 
value of. intellectual acquirements. He did not 
undervalue his great learning in the ecclesiasti- 
cal law of his own nation, his wide acquaintance 
with Roman manners and with Greek literature 
and modes of thought. He was aware how 
these helped him in preaching to both Jews and 
Gentiles. But for his own personal sanctifica- 
tion, when he considered how utterly inoperative 
all this human learning was, and how his whole 
moral life had been changed by knowing Jesus, 
and how this knowledge of Jesus was the best 
preparation for eternity, he exclaimed : "Yea, 
doubtless, and I count all things but loss for 
the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus 
my Lord : for whom I have suffered the loss of 
all things and do count them but dung that I may 
win Christ" (Phil. iii. 8). And very soon he adds : 
" Let us, therefore, as many as are perfect, be 
thus minded," 



This, then, is our perfection of happiness, to 
have the knowledge of Jesus. Knowing how all 
truths center in Jesus, and that Jesus has all 
power in heaven and in earth, what happy views 
a Christian takes of the future of Christ's dear 
flock! They shall never be destroyed. "The 
holy catholic church, which is the communion 
of saints," must endure forever, and grow and 
cover the earth. There may be ebbs and tides, 
and in his human frailty the Christian may be 
more or less depressed or raised by these ; but 
he knows that whatever else may happen to this 
planet, the time will certainly come when "the 
earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord 
as the waters cover the sea." As the waters cover 
the sea? How do the waters cover the sea? 
How immense is the bowl of the ocean ! How 
irregular the brim of that bowl, with its myriads 
of indentations, large and small ! How deeper in 
some places, how shallower in others ! Yet there 
is not a spot which the waters do not cover. 
Think of the incalculable weight of all the 
waters. Think how they press down and in 
and out, until every chink and cranny and cor- 
ner and bay and river-mouth of the sea is filled 
and crowded by the waters. 

Just so shall the knowledge of the Lord 
be. That faithful promise steadies our hopes. 
Blessed be God, that the knowledge of His 
name and truth shall never be lost. Blessed be 
God, that man shall come more and more to 
seek after deeper knowledge of spiritual things, 
as the knowledge which perishes shall fail to 
satisfy them. Our humanity shall not always 
be a babe living on milk. It shall grow into a 
vigorous manhood which shall demand the 
strongest meat of spiritual knowledge to sustain 
it. The time will come, — oh ! it will come, — 
when all the elements of knowledge so neces- 
sary to the infancy of the race, knowledge of 
language and physical sciences and arts, shall be 
looked back upon as the beginning of human 
education. The time will come when the early 
working, toiling, pioneer life of our race shall have 
issued into mansion and plantation and leisure, 
and Man shall find time for culture in spiritual 
things. Blessed are the men who shall aid the 
generations of humanity forward toward this large 
and wealthy place ! Thrice blessed are the men 
who have the self-control to take some time from 
the hungry struggle for money, to grow in their 
spirits, until they shall delight in doctrine, and 
feed with a relish on that "strong meat" which 
"belongeth to them that are of full age, even 
those who by reason of use have their senses 
exercised to discern both good and evil." 



"IF THE SON SHALL MAKE YOU FREE, YE SHALL BE FREE INDEED." — JOHN, VIII. 36. 



The Feast of the Tabernacles closed. The 
discourses of Jesus, advancing his claims to the 
Messiahship, had so excited his enemies that 
they had sought to arrest him, but there was 
something in his manner which so overawed the 
officers that they dared not lay hands on him. 
Amid the conflicting sentiments of rulers and 
people Jesus withdrew to Olivet and spent the 
night in prayer. 

In the morning he came back to the city. 
The Feast of the Tabernacles had ended. The 
lights were dead in the great candelabra that 
had shone upon the city, a reminiscence of the 
pillar of fire which had led their fathers through 
the wilderness. It was the painful darkness fol- 
lowing a great light, the silence of a deserted 
banquet-hall, which now lay upon Jerusalem. 
Jesus entered the temple to teach the people. 
Every day a teacher could find hearers there. 
Now he might still find many who had come up 
from the provinces and were still lingering in the 
capital. Perhaps, pointing to the huge lamps 
now unlighted, he exclaimed, " I am the Light 
of the world ; he that follows me shall not walk 
in darkness, but has the light of life." On the 
spot his adversaries endeavored to counteract 
the force of his teaching by saying to him, " Thou 
bearest testimony concerning thyself ; thy testi- 
mony is not true," as if they would quote him 
against himself, and urge that self-glorification 
was his aim. Jesus answered, " Even if I bear 
testimony concerning myself, my testimony is 
true ; for I know whence I came and whither I 
go ; but ye know not whence I come and whither 
I go. Ye judge according to the flesh, I judge 
not any man. And even if I do judge, my judg- 
ment is true ; for I am not alone, but I and He 
who sent me. But it is also written in your own 
law that the testimony of two is true. I am a 
witness concerning myself, and my Father who 
sent me witnesses for me." Here is a claim to a 
mysterious origin and high position in the uni- 
verse. The nature of the case was such that he 
was compelled to bear witness concerning him- 
self. Nay, more, his very nature was such that 
he was compelled to testify of himself, as light 
which shows the existence of other things makes 



its own existence known. Moreover, they were 
so fleshly that they could not of themselves dis- 
cern spiritual things, so that he was obliged to 
show them. They took a sinful pleasure in dis- 
cerning in man what they might condemn. He 
took no such pleasure. He was not ready to judge 
and condemn men. If they had been as free 
from this evil disposition as he, they would not 
seize every word he spoke as matter for con- 
demnation. 

But when he spoke of his Father as being a 
witness for him, his enemies asked, "Where is 
thy Father?" His reply was, " Ye neither know 
me nor my Father ; if ye had known me ye 
would have known my Father also." They must 
have understood him to mean that he felt a con- 
sciousness of being one with God. That cer- 
tainly was the claim which Jesus set forth. 
Whether he was mistaken or not, whether he 
told the truth or a falsehood, — these are two 
other questions ; but whether he made this claim 
is a question readily answered. He most mani- 
festly did. And no one could find such a claim 
made by any man, otherwise very good and ex- 
emplary, without feeling that however mistaken 
he might be, he is unquestionably sincere in his 
belief. The whole question of the divinity of 
Jesus is narrowed to the inquiry whether his 
judgment was misled by a false consciousness. 
If that question be determined in the affirmative, 
then we have these difficulties on our hands, 
namely, to account for a man so immaculate, so 
surpassingly good, so profound, so rapid and 
searching a reader of the human heart, that the 
like of him has never risen among the sons of 
men ; a being with such self-control, such vast 
powers of mind and wonderful endowments of 
physique, achieving the most resplendent virtues 
of human lives, and dying a sublimest death of 
martyrdom, and influencing the age by his life 
and death, while he himself was inwardly crazed 
by believing himself to be one person while he 
was in reality another ; living and dying in the 
belief that he was God, while in point of fact he 
was really inferior to even any sane man who 
knows who he is. 

It was truth or blasphemy which he was 



Christ the 



Liberator. 



speaking. From the standing-point of the Jews 
it must have seemed the latter, and yet they 
had not the courage to lay hands on the man 
who had committed in their hearing the greatest 
crime possible under the theocracy. His good 
greatness seemed to paralyze them. 

Then said Jesus again to them : " I go 
away, and you shall seek me, and in your sins 
you shall die : for where I go you have not the 
ability to come." The Jews said : " Will he kill 
himself?" He replied, "You are of those be- 
neath ; I am of those above : you are of the 
world ; I am not of the world. I said to you 
that you shall die in your sins; for if you do not 
believe that I am, you shall die in your sins." 
They asked him, sarcastically, "Who art thou ?" 
He replied : " What say I to you from the first? 
I have many things to say and to judge con- 
cerning you, but the Father who sent me is 
true ; and I speak to the world those things 
which I have heard from Him." John inserts 
the explanatory sentence — "They understood 
not that he spoke to them of the Father," God. 
So utterly obtuse and fleshly were they that 
even these mystical utterances of Jesus were in- 
comprehensible. Then he said to them : ' ' When 
you have lifted up the Son of Man, then shall 
you know that I am, and from myself I do 
nothing, but as the Father has taught me so I 
speak. And He who sent me has not left me 
alone. He is with me, for I do always those 
things that please him." 

Upon this many of the people believed on 
him. There was something in the words, or in 
the manner, or in both, which touched them 
and awoke them into faith. But it was not very 
great or very intelligent faith, as appears from 
what immediately follows. He said to such, "If 
ye continue in my word then are you my disci- 
ples indeed, and ye shall know the truth, and the 
truth shall emancipate you." He saw that they 
were regarding him in a sensuous light, as a 
political deliverer from the Roman yoke, and 
therefore spoke this word to set them right. He 
had exhibited such courage in peril, and spoken 
so frankly of his consciousness of being one with 
God, that they had began to think that they 
might have been misled by his antecedents and 
his manner, and that this, after all, was the 
Christ, the Anointed, the Messias — still con- 
necting him, however, with their hopes of free- 
dom from the Roman yoke. This speech, which 
claimed that all his triumphs were to be spirit- 
ual, opened their eyes to their misapprehension. 
Moreover, it touched them on the sorest spot of 
their hearts, as their reply shows. They indig- 



nantly answered him, "Seed of Abraham are 
we, and to no man have we been slaves at any 
time: how dost thou say then, 'Ye shall be 
emancipated ?' " So blind were they as to forget 
that their fathers had been slaves in Egypt and 
Babylon for generations, and that they were vir- 
tually at that very moment the slaves of the 
Roman Empire. Jesus replied, " I most sol- 
emnly assure you that whoever is doing sin is 
the slave of sin. And the slave abides not in 
the house continually. If, therefore, the Son 
shall emancipate you you shall be indeed free." 
The hearers of Jesus knew the relation between 
master and slave in the Roman Empire, and 
from that he drew a picture of vice which is 
appalling. To one who is born free and then en- 
slaved this representation is all the more fearful. 

This whole discourse of Jesus, and the beha- 
vior of the Jews, sets before us the slavery of a 
life of sin and the emancipation which faith in 
Jesus achieves. 

i. The first phase of this slavery is seen in 
the privation of the rights of freemen. There 
are more real benefits enjoyed by those who are 
born free than such as can be specified by word, 
and embodied by any charter. There is the 
absence of the sense of limit, restraint, super- 
spection by another, the very absence of which 
is the presence of a blessing, as the absence of 
malarious elements in the air is the presence of 
what is positively an enjoyable luxury. The 
free mingling with free men, with men 
of lofty aim and fame, the open field to 
enter all the most generous contests of life, and 
prepare one's self to stand where the loftiest 
stand, and do what the greatest do — all this is 
denied to slaves. And that is the position of any 
man who is the slave of any sin. There is a dire 
fate painted in the words, "aliens from the com- 
monwealth of Israel." There was an enormous 
enjoyment in the privilege of saying, "I am a 
Roman citizen." You who are under the domin- 
ions of any sin may say, " I would not be as those 
Christians are : I would not have their duties and 
their self-denial. I would rather have this loose 
enjoyment." Well, just so in Rome a slave 
might have said, " I would not wear those robes, 
I would not carry those badges of office, I would 
not be perplexed with Cato's cares, or weighed 
down with Caesar's burdens. I would rather 
have the free uproarious life of Caesar's kitchen." 
Well, every man to his taste ; but is not that a 
most degraded taste? The question with you is 
whether you will wear that badge and enjoy such 
freedom from high and good things as a slave 
has, or such freedom from low bad things as a 



28 Christ the 



freeman has. In other words the question is, 
which is freedom ? It does seem to me that to 
human life there is no greater charm than equal 
and free mingling with the pure and exalted. 
There is an unseen society of pure and exalted 
spirits in the universe of God. Israel means 
Prince with God. The commonwealth of Israel 
is the community of those who wear their patent 
of nobility from God. To be without Christ, the 
Son of God, is to be an alien to the common- 
wealth of immortal princes, excluded from their 
thoughts, their employments, their enjoyments, 
and their sympathies. 

2. There is another phase of the slavery of 
sin which should make it fearful in our eyes. A 
slave has no choice of employment. He goes 
where, and when, and to do what he is bidden 
by his master. Sin is just such a tyrant, and the 
sinner is just such a slave. Free from the duties 
of Christians, he is bound to the drudgeries of 
sin. Sin comes to a man so alluringly and with 
such obeisance, playing the part of a humble 
servant, offering to bring him pleasures and man- 
ifold delights, and by degrees, unseen by the 
victim, binds him hand and foot and holds him 
so, and lashes him on with cords in the way he 
would not go. Take any sinful, sensual indul- 
gence as an example of them all. How constantly 
in society does intemperance afford the most 
painful and pitiful exhibition of this tyranny. 
When once the man is bound, he cannot tear 
himself away. Go to him and plead with him 
to stop drinking, he will assert with tears his 
vehement desire to break free, but he says he 
cannot. He loves his mother. He loves his 
wife. He loves his child. Plead with him by 
that mother's love. "For her sake stop ! " " No, 
no : I cannot, nor for my wife's, nor for my 
daughter's sake. God knows I love them, and 
I know how this course is breaking their hearts ; 
but I cannot." And the man is perfectly honest. 
It is not because he will not, but because he 
cannot. Oh, you, who seek vice as a servant to 
your enjoyment, remember that you thereby sell 
yourself to a master who has no bowels of com- 
passion, no heart of pity, and no eyes of tears. 
When you would go about other, higher, and en- 
nobling work, when you would sit in parliaments 
and enlarge science and adorn art and build 
monuments along the road of human progress, 
you cannot. Your master will drive you in 
chain gangs to do in most filthy places such work 
as leaves no worthy result. 

3. A slave has no accumulation of property. 
He is himself property. Whatever he gathers 
goes to his master. In the human relationship 



Liberator. 



of master and servant there may be many beau- 
tiful things — the master careful for the health, 
the comfort, and the life of the servant; the serv- 
ant devoted to the interests of the master, their 
material interests being indentical, each gaining 
by what profits the other, because they are both 
human beings. But sin is inhuman. This mas- 
ter is a fiend. He gives to the victim only so 
long as is necessary to keep the victim quiet 
until he binds him. And so a man who is the 
slave of his vices accumulates no personal prop- 
erty for his soul. Property, for the body, is 
what will always be able to give the body some 
sustentation, or comfort, or adornment. What 
will sustain, and comfort, and adorn the soul ? 
Truth, the friendship of the highest spirits, what- 
soever does not pass away with the body, what- 
soever the soul may possess and enjoy when it 
has passed out of the body. But if a man have 
spent his whole life a slave to sin, what does he 
have in eternity ? No nobility, no purity, no 
spiritual power, no love of the truth, no endur- 
ing riches. He dies as a slave dies, and has 
nothing. 

4. A slave has no power to rise. In human 
slavery a man may become noble in his soul. 
His faith, his hope, his charity, his truthfulness, 
his courage, his manhood may grow to dimen- 
sions which would make him conspicuously 
splendid if his position allowed such splendor. 
But a slave cannot bear arms in the contests of 
chivalry or the battles for truth. He can hold 
no office. He is born a slave, a slave he dies. 
There is a wall between him and all the social 
paths which lead upward. The poor free child 
which was born by his side, with no more phys- 
ical or intellectual or moral power, may grow, 
and ascend to a summit from which his virtues 
and powers may shine afar. But the slave, 
while a slave, never rises. It is so with the slave 
of sin. Whatever his natural intellectual capa- 
bilities he can never rise until his fetters be 
burst. Now and then there may come over him 
a sickening sense of this ponderous incapability. 
He can see heights above him which he knows 
that he can never begin to scale. The worst of 
such a case is this : he may become apathetic. 
He can never do it ; he does not care to try. 
He lies flat. He loses courage, loses hope, loses 
aspiration. He becomes a slavish slave. It is 
the last degradation. He has nothing but a 
chain ; and he hugs that chain. Oh ! so may 
a sinner become. So will every sinner be- 
come. It is a terrible state. Better be wasting 
one's strength in mad efforts to break free 
from a degrading thraldom, than to settle 



Christ the 



Liberator. 



down in an utterly careless feeling as to one's 
condition. 

Lastly. In the case of unmitigated serfdom 
the slave is liable to be sent off at any time. If 
the master should grow inhuman, and come to 
hate him, he may send him far from all the 
places with which he has any pleasant associa- 
tions. And the slave can offer no effectual re- 
sistance. This is the case with a man who is 
the slave of sin. Sin is always inhuman, always 
hates its vassals. This very bondage of the soul 
to evil principles, evil passions, evil appetites, is 
a perpetual gravitation away from the home of 
the soul. This is the last and direst of the evils 
of being under the dominion of sin — banishment 
from the presence of God and the glory of His 
power. It is not that the Heavenly Father de- 
sires the banishment of His children. He loves 
them. He longs for them. He draws them. 
They go off on their own account. They sell 
themselves to be slaves of sin. It is sin that 
drags them into that banishment. There is no 
idea of physical pain which to my mind seems 
so intolerable as the idea of a perpetual depart- 
ure from the Father, a constant going away from 
the light, the warmth, the music, the purity, the 
peace, the love, the joy, the freedom, the de- 
lights, of the Father's house. Going off, going 
down, down, down, in the endless winding of 
sinfulness, into deeper darkness, intenser cold, 
wretchedest discord, horriblest filth, — into hatred 
and conflicts and chains, evermore, hopelessly. 
Chains ? Yes ! Men hear them clank now, until 
their blood runs cold ; and if they have not the 
strength to break them off, will they ever have 
the strength? How this question thrills them 
with horror ! You are strong, are you ? You 
are able to pile up colossal fortunes, to overthrow 
strong combinations, to lead an army corps, to 
govern an empire, — are you ? Now try to break 
away from one evil habit which you know to be 
sinful but call little, — try that? O, the great 
man, how weak he is ! O, the little sin, how 
strong it is ! 

But can a man never be delivered from this 
horrible bondage ? That is the question which 
has been the perplexity of mankind from the 
beginning. The best intellectual endeavors of 
mankind have been engaged in devising systems 
of emancipation. Many of them have resulted 
only in adding restraints from without to the 
bondage which was within. Such have been all 
penitentiary and disciplinary reforms. It has 
been supposed that education would be the 
emancipator ; but then the world has discovered 
that intellectual culture only increased the capa- 



bility of the slave to serve his master, but did 
nothing toward his emancipation. Wicked 
men and wicked communities have had high 
scholastic training, and were all the more hurt- 
ful to the world for this increase of power to do 
damage. 

Jesus Christ is the great Liberator. " If the 
Son shall make you free, ye shall be free in- 
deed." Faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, 
as the propitiation for sin, as our personal Sav- 
iour, achieves this great liberty for individual 
souls. Let us consider how this is done. 

1. It is begun in each captive sinful soul by 
creating, as no other system does, a sense of his 
personal responsibility to God. This is the 
foundation of all moral power. The precious- 
ness of himself, in himself alone, and not only 
as a part of humanity, must possess every man. 
He must feel that the Heavenly Father loves 
him just as much as if he were the only child 
the Heavenly Father ever had; that God has 
done for the whole race nothing which He would 
not have done if there were none other to love 
and care for than this only child. He must also 
feel that he is to think and act for himself, and 
not another ; that he is to give account of him- 
self, and not of another; that all the laws of the 
spiritual world would be the same if, instead of 
the myriads of other creatures, there had never 
been any other rational beings in the universe 
except God and himself. This prodigious sen- 
timent of personal responsibility makes every 
true Christian a real free-thinker. He dare not 
accept the thoughts and opinions of others. He 
has to answer for himself. He is not saved in 
a society, or community, or church. Moral 
changes are not carried forward en masse. Each 
soul must think, and feel, and act for itself. It 
is pitiable to see a few passionate men, them- 
selves the slaves of sin, assume the glorious 
name of "Free Thinkers." No man is set free 
from intellectual bondage to some clique or mas- 
ter until his faith in Jesus makes Jesus the Mas- 
ter of the soul ; until believing that Jesus lived 
and died for him, his personal preciousness and 
responsibility cause him to feel that he has a 
moral accountability for his opinions, as for his 
actions. Then he will do the work of thinking 
under the noblest possible influences. There is, 
then, by a solemn sense of the truth of the 
atonement, first of all a liberation from intellect- 
ual masters. 

2. Then follows the letting in of light, break- 
ing up the power of false views and of preju- 
dice. Under the dominion of their sins men 
see all things distorted. The relations between 



80 Christ the 



each man and his God, between God and all 
humanity, become perplexing. Ordinarily, those 
who are violating the commands of God regard 
Him as an autocratic law-maker and executor, 
making and executing laws for His own sovereign 
pleasure, regardless of the welfare of His crea- 
tures. Every violation on their part they regard 
as their misfortune, for which it is criminal in 
God to hold them to account. Now, just so soon 
as such a mind sees that this very God, whom 
he has hated, has so loved him as to invest Him- 
self with flesh, and put Himself in such posture 
to the human soul as to demonstrate His love 
and devotion to His dear human child, the man 
is carried down to foundation principles, to the 
roots of relationships. He becomes the true 
Radical. O ! it is pitiable to see a few mad minds 
attempting to tear up society and the universe 
by the roots, and calling themselves by the great 
name of Radical. No man deserves that name 
who is not finding the roots of his nature in God. 
When God reveals Himself in Jesus, " the Son," 
this becomes possible, not otherwise. 

3. Then the fascination of sin breaks. The 
slavery of sin is a fascination. Fascination is a 
witchcraft accomplished by the eye or by the 
tongue, by which the will of the victim is opiated 
so that it cannot govern his actions, and he is 
surrendered to the power of another. To eman- 
cipate a man you must find something that shall 
denarcotize the will, that shall wake it up from 
its false sleep and reinvigorate it. The Samson 
is asleep with his great head in the lap of the 
deceitful Delilah. He must be roused. So long 
as sin seems to have its greatest damage in the 
harm it does a man's individual self, he may sub- 
mit to sinning. Rut if he can be shown that to 
sin is to violate all the sanctities of manhood and 
Godhood, is the greatest possible wrong to God 
and degradation to man, the glamor will fall 
from about his eyes, and he will see the hideous- 
ness of sin. This is done by Him, the Son, who 
loved us and gave Himself for us. It turns the 
eye from the fascinator to another object. That 
object is a Lover, freely sacrificing Himself to 
save the fascinated. It is a prodigious thrill ; it 
starts the will to help the Lover and defeat the 
fascinator. It rehabitates the throne-power that 
is in the commonwealth of a man's nature. The 
monarch of the soul rises against the degrad- 
ing subjugation of the whole nature, and thus 
the man is helped to freedom by the leverage of 
the doctrine of the Cross. 

I have thus briefly pointed to the effect of the 
doctrine of the Atonement on the intellect, the 
emotions, and the will of the individual man. 



Liberator. 



4. Now, there is established a bond of union 
between the soul and God. If there were no 
sin in the universe all beings would be held in 
a perfect system, the Heavenly Father being the 
center, and the law of love being the law ot 
gravitation. Sin breaks that power. It is as if 
in a moment, in our solar system, the law of 
gravitation should be suspended, and all the 
planets and satellites were flung upon the meas- 
ureless inane, orderless, confused, colliding, in 
mad promiscuousness of falling : or, fixed, stag- 
nant, helpless on the bosom of space. They 
could not govern themselves. They would be 
free ; they would have such freedom as sinners 
think they have, a freedom whose end is destruc- 
tion, because it is a slavery to Chaos and old 
Night. If now these planets could be arrested 
and set back on their orbits, and the law of 
gravitation be re-established, they would be 
really free, — free from all that headlong and irre- 
sistible falling down the chasms of the universe, 
or that woful stillness and slavery to inertia that 
would paralyze them and take all the charm of 
existence away. For freedom from sin the soul 
must have a bond of union with God. That 
bond must be love. It must come out from 
God to the soul. It must be God drawing the 
man, and then man drawing God. This is 
in accordance with all we have learned by our 
science of laws of the universe. And in pre- 
cise accord with this is the doctrine of the 
Atonement. Other philosophers who attempt 
to free man by finding the power of emancipa- 
tion in himself, are acting as if the smaller the 
mass the greater the attraction : Christianity 
conforms to known science. Others make men 
go up among the gods, like Prometheus, to 
steal the fires of heaven. Christianity brings 
the great God down among men to rebind the 
sweet influences of the attraction of love. 

5. This blessed law of love and liberty estab- 
lishes a bond of connection between our souls 
and all the good and beautiful spirits of the 
universe. Is not this, brethren, what Paul 
meant by " the glorious liberty of the children 
of God ?" And does he not say that we have 
liberty to enter into the holiest by the blood of 
Jesus ? What does that mean, if not that the 
self-sacrificing love of Jesus has procured for 
us the freedom of the City of our God, that 
now we mingle freely and equally with all the 
sons of the Most High, that we are free in our 
Father's house at last ? The sons of God have 
a glorious liberty. Theirs is not a boon which 
keeps them always humiliated by a sense of 
their former degradation and present obligation. 



Christ the Liberator. 



31 



It is not a mere political, civil freedom, as when 
a whole people are turned loose after generations 
of slavery, as the Israelites were in Egypt, being 
still slaves in their souls. The power of the love 
of Jesus on the human heart creates a freedom 
of the soul, an inner ennobling, which no politi- 
cal franchise, no wearing of orders on the breast, 
can ever bestow. It is the glorious princely free- 
dom of the spirit. 

6. Lastly. It establishes a man forever in the 
house of his Father, as the brother of Jesus. 
The brotherhood of men is created by their be- 
ing originally the sons of God ; it is established 
when God takes up our humanity, and in Jesus 
by the exhibition of equal love to all souls binds 
us together in the manhood of Jesus. And yet 
a son may choose to abandon his sonship and 
be the serf of another. It is when that slavery 
is broken, when the splendid love of the greatest 
Son of God and greatest brother of Man, wins a 
man into love of his manhood, love of his brother, 
love of his brethren, love of his Father, and love 
of his home — it is when he is numbered with the 
saints in glory everlasting, that he is established 
in his Father's house, and shall never be sent 
off — never banished. 

"Ye shall be free indeed," said Jesus. "In- 
deed I" How emphatic is that and how suggest- 
ive ! "As there may have been cases in which 
the proprietor could not manumit without the 
consent of the son and heir, or at least a manu- 
mission in which the son concurred with the 
father might be regarded as doubly effectual, 
so the freedom and salvation produced by the 
conjoint manumission of both Father and Son 
is most effectual !" Compare the free thought, 
the free heart, the free will of the man who is 
living a life of faith in the Son of God., with the 



captivated intellect, the enslaved emotions, the 
prostrate will of a slave of sin, and the com- 
parison becomes a contrast. The latter is drag- 
ged along a life of compulsory labor which makes 
no enduring riches, and is whipped into his grave 
at last ; the latter roams the world as a child 
roams its father's house, free everywhere, free to 
think aright, free to feel aright, free to will 
aright, free to speak and act aright ; the law of 
right being to him not walls to incarcerate his 
spirit, but barriers to keep all evil and subjugating 
influences from his soul. 

Who, then, is doing most for his race ? The 
men who are agitating political questions under 
the specious and deceiving cries of "liberty," 
"freedom," "independence," or the men who 
are striving to bring to bear upon their fellow- 
men the liberating power of the doctrine of the 
Cross ? After all, how little it matters what maybe 
the civil roof over our heads while we live, whether 
built of autocratic, or monarchic, or republican 
timber, but the freedom of our souls is of most 
unspeakable importance. Under every form ot 
human government, even the freest, men have 
been slaves of sin ; under every form of human 
government, however despotic, men have been 
free in Jesus. And you who spend so much 
thought and time and money in striving to se- 
cure what you call the liberty of the people — let 
me beg you to remember that a man is free 
just in the measure of his yielding himself to 
Jesus, and that a man is a slave just in the 
measure of his yielding himself to sin. " Verily, 
verily, I say unto you, whosoever committeth 
sin is the slave of sin ; and the slave abideth 
not in the house forever, but the Son abideth 
ever. If, therefore, the Son shall make you 
free, ye shall be free indeed." 



V. 

©afeittg tint ^Um away* 

" JESUS SAID, TAKE YE AWAY THE STONE."— JOHN, XI. 39. 



The text occurs in John's profoundly interest- 
ing narrative of the revivification of Lazarus. 
It cannot be necessary to recite the details of so 
well known a transaction. It may be proper 
simply to remind ourselves that when our Lord 
came to the closed sepulcher of his beloved 
friend, and stood there with Martha and Mary, 
and with the Pharisees who were watching what 
he would do, Jesus wept, and groaned in spirit, 
and then commanded the stone to be removed 
from the mouth of the cave in which Lazarus 
lay interred. Against this Martha remonstrated, 
as her brother had been dead four days and 
must be offensive. But Jesus insisted upon 
obedience to his command. Then they took 
away the stone, and our Lord, by His word of 
power, brought Lazarus up from among the 
dead. 

There are some lessons suggested by this 
command of Jesus, under the circumstances, 
which seem to me very important. 

The first is that God never performs an unne- 
cessary act. We know most of God in Jesus. 
More than in nature, more than in any verbal 
revelation, God is manifested in Jesus the Christ. 
It is a very mellifluous line of the poet which 
tells us to "look through Nature up to Nature's 
God ;" but there is not a particle of practical 
good sense in it. No man ever did it. Nature 
seems rather a veil which the Creator has drawn 
over himself, so that no one would know that 
there is a God underneath unless He somehow 
revealed that fact. " For the invisible things of 
Him are clearly seen from the creation of the 
world," because " God hath shown" "that 
which may be known of Him." This is Paul's 
idea in Romans i. But in Jesus is God manifest 
in the flesh. The heart of God is shown to man- 
kind in Jesus. Nature seems to be the outside 
and Jesus the inside of God. His motives and 
emotions are learned not by a long process of 
generalizations from the facts of the world, but by 
a simple, open-eyed, open-hearted, child-like ob- 
servation of the movements of the intellect and 
heart of Jesus. If the life of Jesus be the index 
by which men may know the workings of an 
Infinite Nature, then we must believe that the 



dear God, our Father, never does a single thing 
to afflict His human children unnecessarily, 
never takes any delight in their sufferings, is 
always ready to save them from their sins, and 
does whatsoever an infinitely wise and benevo- 
lent nature can suggest to make them happy. 
So Jesus was. So God must be. 

Now, it is a remarkable characteristic of Jesus 
that He never spoke an unnecessary word nor 
performed an unnecessary deed. He never did 
for another what that person could do for him- 
self. There seemed to be omnipotence at His 
command. He claimed that there was. He per- 
formed acts which go as far as acts can go to 
prove such a proposition as the possession of 
limitless power. All disease was under His con- 
trol. He could instantaneously heal lepers, 
open the eyes of the blind, unstop the ears of 
the deaf, and give tone and health to chronic 
paralytics. All nature seemed under His con- 
trol. He could still storms, and multiply bread 
a thousand-fold, even indefinitely, and change 
water into wine. He was the master of the 
grave. He sent His summons through its gate 
into eternity and called back the spirits of the 
long departed to reinhabit their former bodies. 
There is no perceptible limit to His power. 

And yet He never performed a miracle to 
gratify His own passions or those of others. He 
never exerted His great power for display. If 
Jesus were a mere man to whom Almighty God 
had for a season delegated His almightiness, it 
is inconceivable that he should not at some time 
have put forth His hand to gratify the curiosity 
of His beloved friends, or to indulge His own 
desire for display, or bind the hands of His foes, 
or destroy them with His word of power. But 
He never did. I never knew a man, never heard 
of a man, find no record in any history of a 
man, so continent, so gloriously self-controlling ; 
that he would not, at least once in a life-time, 
break over the bounds and exert this delegated 
power selfishly. Jesus never did. Then God 
never does. It is the merest fanaticism to desire 
and pray that God will give us a sign, do a won- 
der, and set the universe agape at His mon- 
strous power. He never did. He never will. 



Taking the Stone away. 



33 



If His power seem glorious to us it is because 
that power is glorious. All that men see is 
what Habakkuk calls " the hiding of His 
power." God only does what God cannot 
leave undone. 

Again: Our Heavenly Father never does di- 
rectly what He can do through others. He has 
begotten children in many respects like Himself : 
like Him in capability of knowing, feeling, and 
acting : like Him in the perfect freedom of their 
wills. He endows them. He gives them field. 
He gives them time. They must do all the rest. 
He will never do for any man, in any respect, 
what that man can do for himself. He will never 
do for the race what the race can do for itself. 
He gives wood, and iron, and coal. But He 
never builds a vessel, hammers out a boiler, 
adjusts machinery, or raises steam. He never 
constructs a locomotive, nor grades and lays a 
railway. He might have furnished Noah with a 
complete ocean steamer : but He did not. He 
let the patriarch hammer away at the ark through 
a century, but He did furnish him with the 
length, the breadth, and the height, because 
there was no skill in him to discover these, and 
they could not be known by the light of nature. 

The Eternal Father could, in the very begin- 
ning, have stocked the world with all the imple- 
ments of agriculture and trade, with all the 
facilities for the most rapid and comfortable 
traveling, and the instruments for scientific re- 
search, and have started His human family in 
house-keeping with everything complete at once. 
But He did not. He put man down among the 
great acts of God, the great facts of the uni- 
verse, the great laws of His government, with 
all necessary physical, intellectual, and moral 
powers, and with due scope for their exercise, 
and man was to produce the result. God made 
the garden because man could not ; and then 
set man to dress the garden because God would 
not. That has been His way ever ; and will be 
His way forever. It is mere fanaticism to do or 
desire anything different from this or contrary 
thereunto, 

It is reasonable to suppose that the Eternal 
Father desires to have this earth brought to 
perfect cultivation, so that every spot shall be 
caused to bloom like the garden of the Lord or be 
made like a part of His holy temple, so that hu- 
man life shall be enjoyed in its perfection, and the 
physical universe be the minister of the divine 
soul of man. In a moment, in a twinkling of 
the eye, He could make it such. But He does 
not. It may be centuries. It may be cycles. 
He leaves man to advance steadily, learning 



from falls, and failures, and mistakes, each gen- 
eration improving on its predecessor until the 
earth shall be subdued to man, and man shall 
be subdued to the obedience of Christ. There 
was no Golden Age behind us, except in the 
minds of the poets. There is a Golden Age be- 
fore us, and to that we must continually stretch 
forward. 

This same rule obtains in religious and spir- 
itual man. We are taught the lesson that man'? 
agency precedes God's working, that in thi. 
spiritual regeneration of men there is first the 
agency of their fellow-men doing all they can 
do, and then the power of the mighty God 
doing what man cannot do. The dead Lazarus 
is a type of all our beloved ones who are still 
" dead in trespasses and in sins." The voice of 
Jesus in his revivification represents the voice 
and power of God in regeneration. But in the 
salvation of men God declines to do what it is 
possible for men to accomplish. Hence, we 
have human agencies, mere mortal instrumental- 
ities, operating for the conversion of men from 
the error of their ways, beginning in them that 
resurrection unto life which can be consummated 
only by the Spirit of God. Hence we have 
churches, sacraments, preaching, printed books. 
Hence we have the operation of the law of hu- 
man influence, of husbands and wives, parents 
and children, teachers and scholars. 

The Heavenly Father will not do for our chil- 
dren, dear brethren, what we earthly parents 
can do. He will not exert His omnipotence one 
particle toward building up our church in what 
we can do ourselves. He will not clean, and 
warm, and ventilate the building, and sing the 
hymns, and preach the sermons, and pay the 
pastoral visits, and 'instruct the Sunday-school. 
Because we can do these things, we must. He 
will not invite our friends to go with us to church, 
and exert over them the influence which we are 
bound to exert. But when we have gone to 
the end of our poor capabilities the Heavenly 
Father will do all the rest. He will not roll the 
stone from the mouth of the cave in which our 
dear brother lies dead, but He will stand at the 
mouth of the sepulcher and cry with the voice 
of divine, almighty, revivifying power, Lazarus, 
come forth. 

It is in view of this permanent law of the uni- 
verse that I come to beseech you as Christian 
men, who love your brethren, dead though they 
be, to go with Jesus to their grave, and consider 
the stone at the mouth of their sepulcher ; and 
while you believe that Jesus is the Resur- 
rection and the Life, remember that he expects 



34 Taking the 



you to do what you can, and while He does not 
say to you, " Bring your brethren to life again," 
He does say, " Take ye away the stone." 

Let us consider some of the stones which it is 
possible for us to remove before Jesus does His 
mighty work. 

There is the stone of INDIFFERENCE. 

Your friend has no care for religious subjects. 
He does not doubt. He is far from denying. He 
never dreams of opposing religion or religious 
people. He is not a fool. There is no stupidity 
in his nature. He is not a hard-hearted egotist. 
He has ordinarily quick perception and fine 
emotions. He cares for many things. He is 
careful of himself. He guards his health and 
cultivates his mind and manners. He is devoted 
to his business and does not neglect his friends. 
His ear is open to the cry of sorrow and he in- 
terests himself in the advancement of his race. 
But somehow it has come to pass that there has 
never come to him a proper sense of his own 
spiritual condition, a making real to himself the 
vast and grand eternal spiritual system with 
which he is environed, the closeness of the 
spiritual to the natural, his individual responsi- 
bility to God his Father for his influence over 
man his brother, the necessity of seeking after 
holiness and living a life of faith in the Son of 
God. 

Many things may have produced this indiffer- 
ence. 

There is the engrossing work of life, the per- 
petual return of the bread question to be settled. 
He has perhaps always had to struggle for a 
livelihood, until the effort of working from day 
to day to keep life prolonged has grown into the 
habit of considering only such things as bear on 
that instant, immediate question. 

Perhaps he is in a line above that ; but then 
the competitions of life are strong on him. He 
has heard so much of property, of merchandise 
and stocks, or boats and roads, of trade and 
gain-getting, that, feeling that he has as much 
brains perhaps as those who have made vast for- 
tunes, he has entered the race. The competi- 
tion is so keen that he has forgotten everything 
else. He is like a racer who does not notice 
whether the sun is shining or the clouds gather- 
ing, and takes account of nothing but his ap- 
proach to the goal. All he needs is to be ar- 
rested and made to feel for a moment that he is 
wasting his energies for a prize he may not gain, 
or which if gained is not to be compared with 
something else he is neglecting. 

Perhaps it is the indifference of ignorance. 
The man does not know that there is gold in 



Stone away. 



California or Australia, and keeps at his potato 
patch. He does not know the treasures and de- 
lights that are in a religious life, and so satisfies 
himself with the best things he does know, 
namely, his worldly pursuits and sinful plea- 
sures. 

Perhaps he is in a cold clime. There are no 
hearty Christian people about him to generate 
a warm religious atmosphere. He is freezing. 
He becomes stupid. When people are at the 
point to freeze they grow duller and duller. 
They desire to cease from all active exertion. 
They would rather die than stir. It is no mercy 
in a fellow- traveler to indulge a freezing man 
and let him take a short nap. A short nap 
under those circumstances may be the long sleep 
of death. He must tug at him, pull him, pound 
him, jerk him, pinch him, make him angry, 
anything but let him be quiet. Quiet now is 
death. 

Your friend's indifference keeps the grave 
closed over him. You can at least try to take 
that stone away. Make him feel that nothing is 
so stupid, so wicked, so ruinous, as to ignore 
his Heavenly Father and the spiritual world. 
You must do this wisely, but you must do it, 
And I know no way so effectual as to make him 
see that whatever else you neglect, and to. what- 
ever else you may be indifferent, you are sensi' 
tively quick to all that pertains to the great sur- 
rounding and underlying spiritual world. 

Another stone covers another grave. It is 
SKEPTICISM. 

Men doubt. They hesitate. They question. 
But they do not yet positively deny. 

There are two courses open to them. They may 
bury their doubts in their own hearts, and throw 
themselves back into indifference ; or they may 
open their minds to their friends. Their friends 
are either religious or irreligious. If the latter, 
they do not wish to hear anything on the subject ; 
and if they did hear, they have no care for such 
things, no sympathy, no knowledge with which 
to help. If the former — you and I are of that 
class — what then? In religious circles the very 
name of" skeptic" has been doomed to infamy. 
Just say " he's a skeptic," and all men shun him 
as a leper. More so perhaps years ago than 
now; but very much so now. A young 
man would sooner go to the pastor of 
his family and acknowledge himself a pro- 
fane person, a drunkard, an unfaithful friend, 
than acknowledge he was a skeptic, skepticism 
being generally regarded in "evangelical circles" 
as worse than sin. 

All that seems to me to be very wrong. We 



Taking the Stone away. 



35 



ought most tenderly to strive to ascertain 
whether this stone is over the mouth of the 
grave in which some dear child or some friend 
lies buried, and take the stone away. But if the 
friend should wake in the grave and find the 
stone and begin to bemoan his condition, would 
it not be most heartless in us to go away and 
leave him locked in there ? 

For my part I would rather have all the irre- 
ligious men in my congregation intelligently and 
honestly skeptical than brutally indifferent. It 
is stupidity that is dreadful. Doubt means some 
attention to the subject. Doubt means being 
awake to the importance of thinking. Doubt 
means that the mind has not settled in wrong. 
Honest doubt means earnest study. If our re- 
ligion be true, and if the guidance of the Holy 
Spirit, as we teach, is guaranteed to every man 
who sets himself to the honest investigation of 
the truth, then what have we to be afraid of? 
Many a man has been driven into sheer infidel- 
ity, into indifference, and into despair, because 
he did not dare tell his nearest friends what was 
his condition. If there be any such a soul in 
my congregation, let me say at least this much, 
that he may favor me with a visit without fear 
that he will be despised or hated for any honest, 
uncaptious doubts. No, no; I have a fellow- 
feeling for such a soul. The son of a minister 
of the gospel myself, entering the ministry in 
early life, and early the father of boys, having 
received much of my religion traditionally, not 
daring to say my thoughts aloud, I know what 
it is to fight the specters in the dark ; so that 
now there seems to me very little of all the great 
ground of truth I stand on which is not, by 
God's grace, conquered territory; territory clung 
to all the more tenaciously and loved all the 
more dearly because it has been conquered in 
silent battles that were not easily and cheaply 
won. 

O, my brethren, what our Master said to 
Thomas is true : Blessed are ihey that have not 
seen and yet believed: but doubting Thomas be- 
came a martyr for the faith ; and when the men 
who doubt have their doubts removed, not by sight 
but by faith, what blessed men are they ! Let your 
faith help their skepticism. Do not throw that 
poor man down because ye are so strong and 
he is so weak. Do not leave this stone on the 
mouth of your brother's sepulcher. Make him 
feel that he is not necessarily lost because he 
questions, but that very many of all the Lord's 
most faithful followers have had just such experi- 
ence as his, that Jesus sympathizes with all such 
souls and never wearies of them. O if we had 



our dear Lord's patience with the bruised reed 
and the smoking flax, how many such reeds 
would be mended which are now broken, how 
many such wicks would flame into splendor 
which we now smother into darkness by our 
want of skill or want of feeling ! 

Another stone lies at many a grave's mouth. 

It is UNBELIEF IN CHRIST BECAUSE OF UNBE- 
LIEF in Christians. 

It is exceedingly difficult to persuade men, — 
we ourselves feel how difficult it is to believe, — 
that a cause must always be kept distinct from 
its professed adherents and defenders. Alas for 
the world if men were called to believe in Chris- 
tians rather than to believe in Christ ! It ought 
to increase the scrupulousness of Christians in 
all their behavior to know there are so few men 
of such philosophical cast or training of mind as 
to make this distinction. Ninety-nine out of 
every hundred men who are prejudiced against 
Christianity make a wrong use of the saying of 
Jesus, "By their fruits ye shall know them." 
The plain meaning of the Lord was that if their 
lives are not being brought into accordance with 
Christianity, these people are not Christians ; 
that they are to be judged, not Christianity. 

If there be such present, I put it to your con- 
sciences whether you are acting fairly by your 
, own intellects to acknowledge Christ's authority 
as decisive and not yield yourselves to his author- 
ity in all respects. You hold others to Christ's 
standard : who frees you ? But if you will 
quote the words of Jesus, are you not unfair 
to pervert them ? He says, " By their fruits ye 
shall know ihe??i" the false Christians; but you 
use it as if He had said, " By their fruits ye 
shall know it," as if Christ had said, " Ye shall 
know the truth of Christianity by the evil doings 
of them who are no Christians except in name." 
I submit to your own candor the task of correct- 
ing this erroneous behavior of your intellect 
which is so injurious to you. 

But; my dear brethren of the church, this wrong 
which unchristian people do to Christianity is no 
excuse for the wrong which our defective behavior 
does them. They could not make this mistake if 
we did not furnish the occasion. Let us look 
closely about us and see what is the spiritual con- 
dition of those nearest to us. The children of our 
neighbors are becoming humble, earnest young 
Christians. Ours are not What is the reason ? 
Do not look, my brother, beyond yourself. Do 
not lay everything to their carnal minds and the 
pressure of the age, until you have thoroughly 
satisfied your own soul that you are not the 
stone at the mouth of the grave which holds 



36 Taking the 



them. You will have much difficulty in settling 
that question. Your children love you and will 
not tell you. Perhaps their love has blinded 
them to the real state of the case. You are in 
their way to Jesus, and they love you so that they 
cannot see it. Search your own soul. If there 
be any evil way in us it will be sure to tell on 
our lives. We may be truly Christ's and He 
will own us at His coming ; and yet there may 
be some ugly streak in our dispositions, some 
bad manners, some unchristian roughness that 
perpetually perplexes our children and servants, 
and keeps the force of the Gospel from their hearts. 

If there be present, as so frequently in this 
congregation there are, gentlemen who have 
many in their employ, heads of large manufac- 
tories, chiefs of large mercantile houses, who 
are communicants of some branch of Christ's 
church, let me beg them to consider their rela- 
tions to those in their employ. My brother, 
how many are there in your house ? Fifty, sixty, 
perhaps a hundred clerks and others. How 
many of them are professing Christians ? You 
do not know ? How can you remain ignorant? 
If you had the slightest suspicion that one of 
them was a rogue, you would set your in- 
genuity to work and expend days in satisfying 
yourself, and. feel rewarded by the profound 
satisfaction you would have in the discovery of 
his incorruptibility, or in the sense of safety 
experienced at his detection and expulsion from 
your house. But you do not know whether he 
is a Christian ? 

My brother, facts sometimes come to your 
pastor that do not reach you. You are known 
as a successful merchant and a member of the 
Church. Mothers, off in New England or in the 
far South, have heard your fame. They have 
boys who long to be merchants and push their 
fortunes in this great city. It nearly kills those 
mothers to give up these boys. But if they can 
only secure situations in your house how happy 
those mothers would be ! Well, you take therm 
They are not religious. Their mothers feel so 
safe and happy because those boys are under 
your religious influence. You set them to work. 
You push them. You make them work when 
they should be sleeping, or when they should 
be at the prayer-meeting. You stimulate them 
to undue methods of trade ; you show no care 
for their souls, nor your own, nor any other 
souls. They see you spending your Sundays, 
sometimes your communion Sundays, at hotels, 
"drumming" up custom. What then! What 
then ? O, my brother, you are not only allow- 
ing the stone to remain on the mouth of their 



Stone away. 



graves, but you are heaping up stones and seal- 
ing the sepulchers. " Take away the stone !" 
Take it away this day. If all the members of 
my church would devote a portion of next week 
to tender religious care for their children and 
those in their employ, and the young people 
under their influence, the next communion 
Sunday would witness souls flocking into this 
church as the doves flock to their windows. It 
is related of Dr. Lyman Beecher that, while he 
was laboring most successfully in the city of 
Boston, he was asked how it was that he was 
able to accomplish so much. He replied, " It 
is not I that do it; it is my Church. I," con- 
tinued he, " preach as hard as I can on Sabbath, 
and then I have four hundred members who go 
out and preach every day of the week." 

Perhaps the heaviest stone over the mouth 
of the grave of those who are dead in sins is the 

INDULGENCE OF SOME VICE. 

That must be taken away to let the voice of 
the Gospel reach the torpid conscience. And no 
vice so stands in the way of the progress of the 
Gospel as the vice of intemperance. I repeat 
in this sermon what I said in a speech last 
month, that I have found no wall so hard to 
penetrate, no obstruction to my usefulness as 
a minister of the Gospel so great as drunken- 
ness. I tell you frankly that all the other 
troubles I have encountered in the building up 
of this church, taken together, have not been 
so great, so oppressive, so weakening as in- 
temperance. " No drunkard shall inherit the 
kingdom of God." While a man remains under 
the influence of strong drink the Gospel cannot 
reach him. So when a man is drinking the 
first thing is to break him away from that. 
Therefore, it is more than once on Sunday 
night, after a day of work that had drained my 
vitality, I have walked and ridden until after mid- 
night, going into places that were not seemly, 
intent on rescuing some man whom I loved 
who was going down into that fearful abyss. I 
knew that until by loving effort I had broken 
that dire fascination over my brother all my 
preaching to him would be as when one pipes 
in the face of the whirlwind. 

Brethren, I beseech you to give your earnest 
efforts to the removal of this great obstruction 
to the Gospel. Watch yourselves, however safe 
you may be; watch your children and your 
clerks lovingly. Guard your homes. Take 
care that your dinner-tables on Sunday be not a 
gulf in which the sermons be drowned. Take 
care that your social pleasures have not the 
semblance of debauch. Take care that you do 



Taking the Stone away. 



37 



not somehow cause to stumble and fail those 
earnest men who are striving to take the stone 
of intemperance from the grave of many a young 
Lazarus. God bless you, men. you who during 
the week are doing so much to prepare men for 
the Sunday, you who are no fanatics, who do 
not profess to be able to raise the dead, but are 
humbly striving to obey in your measure and 
widely the command of your Lord, "Take ye 
the stone away." 

Finally, my brethren, let us go back to the 
grave of Lazarus. How Martha loved the dead, 
and how Mary loved him ! Their friends among 
the Pharisees sympathized with these sweet 
bereaved sisters. But they could not minister 
to the grief-stricken heart. They could go to 
the grave and weep ; but their tears could not 
fall in the sight of the beloved, their lamenta- 
tions could not stii the dull cold ear of death. 
They might move the stone away, and go in, 
and bring Lazarus out, and slip off the grave- 
clothes, and stand him upright in their presence. 
But there would be no comfort in that. He 
would still be sightless, and speechless, and 
deaf, and dead, and even offensive. They could 



not speak him into life. There is no help for 
those who go to the grave without Jesus. Have 
you a beloved wife, or husband, or child, or 
brother, dead in trespasses and sins, buried in 
darkness, the grave covered with a stone ? Do 
you believe that Jesus is true when he says, " I 
am the Resurrection and the Life ?" Take Jesus 
to the grave of your belo\ ed. Jesus loves him. 
See how the Saviour weeps. Hear how the Re- 
deemer groans. Do you not perceive how He 
loves him? Do all whatsoever Jesus bids you. 
as for your beloved. He will not make a mis- 
take. He will not misdirect you. Do all He 
says. You can do no more. He does not re- 
quire what is impracticable. He will do all the 
rest. But He will not remove the stone. Man's 
agency must precede God's power. " Takejj/tf 
away the stone," He says. Now, brethren, let 
us take every stone away from every grave's 
mouth, and then we shall have our souls thrilled 
by hearing our Lord cry out, " Lazarus, come 
forth !" And then shall our eyes be gladdened 
by seeing the men who were dead in sins restored 
to spiritual life and added to the circle of our 
active Christian brotherhood. 



VI. 

"let no man despise thee." — titus, ii. 15. 



So many sermons are addressed to the pew 
that liberty should be given for an occasional 
sermon to the pulpit. If such privilege be 
granted, there would seem to be no fitter oc- 
casion than on the birthday of the pastor ; and, 
as this is mine, I shall preach for my own special 
edification. Perhaps the other ministers, whom 
I see scattered through the congregation, and 
perhaps our lay brethren as well, may find some- 
thing interesting and profitable. 

It is impossible for any man to keep himself 
from being hated. Hatred may exist without 
cause. In the severe struggle of life, where so 
much competition is in every department of 
thought and activity, it is quite easy for unsuccess- 
ful people to fancy that their failures are due to the 
success of others, whom they consequently hate ; 
although those others have in no way intended to 
obstruct the path of the failers or hinder their 
work. It is thus that innocent people are often 
really hated. It is the price they pay for their gifts, 
their energy, and their success. There is another 
strange trait in human nature. Whenever in- 
jury has been done it is usually the injurer who 
hates. If you hate any man, there are ninety- 
nine chances to one that you have somehow 
rather done him a wrong than that he has 
wronged you. The injured party has a sense of 
being innocent. He can comfort himself with 
the exercise of the sublime virtue of forgiveness. 
But the injurer must justify and comfort himself 
otherwise ; and so he endeavors to represent the 
victim of his slanderous tongue or his injurious 
deed as really bad and really deserving all that 
has been done to him. In general the ignorant 
hate the wise and the intelligent. This superior 
knowledge in others is like the sun's light to 
bats and owls and moles, painfully blinding, — 
and they hate at once the knowledge and the 
man who knows. In general the bad hate the 
good, because goodness is always a most im- 
pressive and powerful rebuke of badness, even 
when good men are silent. It is on that account 
partly that Jesus teaches us how unsafe is our 
condition when all men speak well of us, when 
the verdict of the partisans of evil is in our 
favor. 



But a man can keep himself from being de- 
spised. The rule is that only the despicable are 
despised. The exception is when a man, not in 
himself despicable, is despised by some one who 
does not know him. In that case it is not the 
real individual who is despised, but some ideal 
person. You may know intimately a man 
who is at the same time very good and very 
great; but you may hate him; and you may 
hate him simply because he is good and great. 
But you cannot know a man who is either good 
or great, and despise him. That is not possible 
as the human mind is constituted. 

It is a greater misfortune to be despised than 
to be hated. A man may hate you now who, 
when his own character is changed, may come 
to love you with a passion strong and ardent as 
his former hatred. But if one despise you, 
even when he comes to know you better he will 
find it difficult to discriminate between you and 
the idea he has had of you. If a man hate you, 
so live at least that he may not despise you. If 
you have battles, he fought as a lion and not as 
a snake. Leonine savageness is at least grand, 
while serpentine cunning is always despicable. 

The precept of the Apostle Paul, " Let no 
man despise thee," is founded on a profound 
knowledge of human nature. But this precept 
is addressed to Christian ministers. In one case 
he writes to Timothy, " Let no man despise thy 
youth." In another he writes to Titus, "Let 
no man despise thee." The plain meaning is — 
live so that no man can despise you, however 
much he may hate and oppose your person and 
your ministry. 

When a Christian minister comes to consider 
this precept as applied to himself, he naturally 
begins by considering his relations to men, to 
society in general. What is he ? A herald. 
That is the name by which he is called in the 
book to which he appeals as the highest authority. 
He is to make a proclamation. He believes, or 
ought to believe, that that proclamation comes 
from "the King, eternal, immortal, invisible, 
the only wise God, our Saviour." He believes, 
or ought to believe, that it commends itself 
to every man's conscience in the sight of God ; 



A Despicable, Minister. 



39 



that the reception of it is the most important 
fact in the history of any soul, and that its re- 
jection is fraught with at least incalculable evil. 
It is his business by every honorable means to 
secure the reception of that message, and to re- 
move from every man every obstruction to its 
reception. That is to be the one absorbing work 
of his life. 

A minister of the gospel, therefore, makes 
himself despicable whenever he does anything 
which is proof that he himself does not believe 
the message he proclaims to others. No lie is 
noble. An acted lie is ignoble. A life of lying, 
unconsciously deceiving one's self or consciously 
deceiving others, is despicable ; but to continue 
in lying, on subjects the most awful and most 
important, is unspeakably despicable. It falls 
below an ordinary man's capability of hating. 
It is the case where a huge crime is perpetrated 
by a very little sinner. 

Such proofs may come in most opposite ways. 

In the first place it may appear in a minister's 
assuming what does not of right belong to him. 

To hold a position for which one is evidently 
not capacitated by nature or grace or education, 
is to make one appear badly in the eyes of one's 
fellows. A man who undertakes small things 
and does them well, appears much better than a 
larger and stronger man who undertakes what 
he is obviously not able to accomplish, and what 
he should have known was beyond his depth. 
If a learned Chief-Justice, through sheer igno- 
rance of the demands of the position, should 
assume the command of one of our ocean 
steamers, all his law learning would avail noth- 
ing to keep him from contempt. He should 
have known that law is one thing and ocean 
navigation another. If a preacher, who had 
never heard a law lecture in his life, should 
allow himself to be announced as professor of 
law in a college, he would be a subject of ridi- 
cule, whatever his abilities in the pulpit. 

A minister of the gospel ought to know just 
what it is his position demands of him, and 
assume nothing beyond. He is a servant of the 
souls of men, to wait on those souls, bringing 
all spiritual help from the gospel to those souls. 
He is no more. He has no other function. 
Men can be sanctified only by knowing the truth. 
He can do no more than help them to the 
knowledge of that truth. If he thinks he can 
do anything more he is a fool. He does not 
know his business. If he know he can do no 
more, and yet make the impression upon others 
that he can, for the purpose of bringing them 
under his influence, he is more than a fool, he 



is a miscreant. One may speak positively on 
this subject, because the Holy Scriptures are so 
explicit thereon. 

There is no priest in Christianity but Jesus 
Christ ; that is to say, there is no one who dare 
offer any sacrifice to God for the sins of the peo- 
ple, or be in any worthy sense a mediator be- 
tween God and man, except Jesus Christ. 
When, therefore, any man calls himself "priest," 
in the sense of having the function of an offi- 
cial mediator between the Heavenly Father and 
His children, he is despicable for want of sense 
or want of principle. He may have all learning 
in other departments, but that will not serve him 
here, any more than the law learning of the 
Chief-Justice, in my illustration a while ago, 
would save him from the contempt of the crew 
if he should undertake to command a vessel in 
a voyage across the Atlantic. No man, there- 
fore, who has any self-respect, ought to allow 
himself to be addressed as ''priest," unless the 
word be used as a mere contraction of " presby- 
ter," and even then by its associations is it dan- 
gerous. The man who claims the title and pre- 
tends to the function of a priest, in the sense 
already stated, deserves the contempt of men of 
intelligence. It is this pretence which in the 
last century caused the reaction of infidelity in 
Europe against all religion. It will do so any- 
where. Therefore all true ministers of the gos- 
pel ought to save themselves from being despised 
by doing what they can to drive from the minis- 
try those petty priestlings of vast pretensions 
and contemptible capabilities, by uniting them- 
selves with all other gentlemen in despising 
these worse than contemptible pretences. 

Another cause of contempt for some ministers 
may be found in their claiming certain immuni- 
ties which do not in right reason belong to them, 
so far as other men can see. 

To every upright, honorable, devoted minister 
there will come an unusual amount of respect, 
which begets confidence, and this on the part 
of men who are not specially religious. Such 
confidence is always used with the utmost pos- 
sible discretion by the true gentlemen of the 
profession, the earnest, humble ministers of 
Jesus. It comes by and by to be transferred to 
the profession itself, so that bad men who enter 
the ministry take advantage of it. It ought not, 
therefore, to be withheld from the good. And, 
as a general thing, I think men of sense do dis- 
criminate. But they cannot see why a man 
should be treated as if he belonged to neither 
the masculine nor feminine gender, simply be- 
cause he preaches the gospel. And yet we 



40 



A Despicable Minister. 



know that some ministers of the gospel do be- 
have as if they thought they belonged to a third 
sex. Age, position, attainments, usefulness, 
are claims to respect, but the minister should 
share them with men of other professions. He 
should expect to be honored simply in propor- 
tion to his abilities, his attainments, and his use- 
fulness, and should feel that a wood-sawyer or 
boot-black who does his work thoroughly and 
well is worthy of more honor than a minister of 
the gospel who is a miserable pretender. 

"Let no man despise thee;" but who can 
help despising a weakling who has been edu- 
cated for the pulpit by a father who had so little 
sense as to believe that because his son had no 
capacity for business it was better to make a 
preacher of him ; and who, because he has been 
got into the pulpit, puts on airs, allows no ex- 
amination of his expressed opinion, regards him- 
self as the anointed of the Lord, and claims the 
uppermost seat in every synagogue and immu- 
nities from all the trying positions of citizenship? 
A man who really is not respectable in his char- 
acter cannot be rendered honorable by any office 
or position. 

Men of other professions know this ; and, 
although they may not say so, they cannot see 
why an empty-headed pretender should be ad- 
vanced before his superiors, simply because he 
wears a white cravat and buttons his vest across 
his whole chest. But men of sense never feel 
thus toward a modest, unpretending, hard work- 
ing, and sincere preacher of the glorious gospel 
of the Son of God. 

Again : a minister may render himself despic- 
able by relying upon worldly means alone, in 
order to secure spiritual ends. 

When men detect that in a minister, it seems 
at once to convince them that the man never 
had a true faith in the existence of a spiritual 
world, and in the existence and offices of that 
Holy Ghost of whom the Bible speaks and of 
whom he must sometimes preach. All men of 
intelligence recognize the connection between 
the natural and the supernatural, and the action 
and reaction of each. The intellect is addressed 
through the senses. It is unphilosophical to re- 
pudiate the claims of the material as if they con- 
flicted with the claims of the immaterial, whereas 
God has so constituted His universe that each is 
perpetually modified by the other. I do not 
mean that. I mean that when a minister makes 
his church a mere secular establishment, which 
shall gratify and even in some sense educate the 
people in architecture, ecclesiastical decoration, 
classic music, oratory, liberal views, and polite 



manners,— when he shall work as if the aim 
were simply to crowd the house with a large 
select audience, who should generate the neces- 
sary animal and mental magnetism to make all 
things pleasant, and whose pew-rents should 
make a splendid financial exhibit, — when he 
shall have even succeeded in all that, as a Lyce- 
um manager he is splendid, but as a minister of 
Jesus he is despicable. Understand, there is no 
objection to Lyceums; but all men of best views 
on religious subjects seem to think that the 
church should not be made a Lyceum. Under- 
stand further : that I for one do not object to the 
use of all these things I have just specified. I 
have never seen a church too beautiful or grand 
to be devoted to the worship of Jesus ; I have 
never heard strains too ravishing in which to 
sing the praises of Him who has loved us and 
given Himself for us ; I have never heard any 
manner of speech too lofty and eloquent for the 
themes of human salvation. But I do say that 
whenever a pastor can command the very best 
of these, and relies upon them solely, he has 
approximated the crime of sinning against 
the Holy Ghost of God. Blasphemers in 
high places or low may talk of "running the 
churches" as secular men talk of running ma- 
chines. Such language may be expected of 
blasphemers. But when a minister, without 
using the phrase, performs the act, he is simply 
despicable. 

The obverse fault is the use of one's position 
as a spiritual teacher to gain worldly ends, 
whether personal or partisan. 

A fair use of secular instrumentalities for the 
accumulation of money or fame perhaps no rea- 
sonable mind would censure. But when a man 
who professes to have devoted himself to the 
spiritual improvement of mankind clearly em- 
ploys his place to enrich himself, he is despica- 
ble. He does not win his money, he steals it. 
Not that a minister may not be rich and be 
honest. Some of the best of living workers for 
Jesus are rich by inheritance ; some have be- 
come rich while ministers, because some men 
have such gifts that they cannot be kept poor. 
But these men have not used the position of the 
ministry for personal aggrandizement, while 
some of the poor preachers of the gospel have. 
There does not seem to be any specially sancti- 
fying energy in either riches or poverty. 

It is such use of the ministry as makes " politi- 
cal parsons" despicable. No man can prostitute 
the pulpit to the use of a political harangue who 
will not at the time be praised by the politicians 
to whom he sells his honor. But these very 



A Despicable Minister. 



men despise him in their hearts, and use him 
as they use the pimps and tools of the pot-house, 
simply to make votes, They have no use for 
him after the election. These politicians, if they 
should come to be convicted of sin, or if they 
should be in the midst of the tremendousness of 
dying, would never send for the political parson. 
He has proved false to his God, will he prove 
true to his brother ? They will desire the serv- 
ices of a man whose simple devotion to his 
great work of winning souls has commanded 
their sincere respect. 

Again : a minister may make himself disrepu- 
table by neglecting to prepare himself for the 
proper discharge of the functions of his office. 

He has to deal with the most complex and 
profound questions of life and destiny ; he has 
to discuss questions which connect themselves 
with all the most painfully abstruse speculations 
of the human mind, and he has to conduct these 
discussions not so as to merely entertain or even 
satisfy the intellects of his hearers. He is an 
utter failure if he do not make all those discus- 
sions profitable to their souls. A lawyer is a 
failure if he never carries a case, however much 
he may entertain the court and the jury. A 
physician is a failure, however much he may en- 
tertain the intellects of his patients, if they all 
die. A minister's one business is to save souls. 
All his studies and visits, all his labors and 
amusements, all his habits and pursuits, must 
bear to that. To the proposition that this is 
most important and honorable, and ought to be 
the most engrossing occupation possible to man, 
all thinking persons are ready to give at least an 
intellectual assent. The minister of the gospel 
professes to believe it most heartily. He is to 
save souls. He is to command the respect and 
hold the attention and win the confidence of 
men; and then he is to use that confidence to 
prepare them for the reception of that truth as 
it is in Jesus, which sanctifies men's souls. Can 
he do this and be an idler ? 

The world makes rapid progress in all science. 
No chemisf expects a minister to be up in chem- 
istry as he is ; no political economist expects 
him to be " posted" on all the minutiae which go 
to solve the great problems of civil and social 
advancement. But they do expect him to know 
something beyond a few dry theological prop- 
ositions and a few dry jokes. They do ex- 
pect him to be a worker. They work. These 
men of business rise early and toil late. These 
professional men are keeping up with the prog- 
ress of the learning in their departments. The 
lawyer naturally asks whether a man who has 



the spiritual estate of men to deal with ought 
not to be as industrious as one who has to deal 
only with their temporal estates. The physician 
naturally asks whether a man who has the cure 
of souls ought to be less strictly engaged than 
he who has only the cure of bodies. These 
men of mental and bodily labor reasonably de- 
spise an idler in any department, particularly in 
a calling the most pressing and important. 

They never pretend even, they certainly could 
not boast, that they never study, that they never 
think of their cases until they rise to address the 
jury, that they never study their patients before 
writing a prescription. No man would employ 
a lawyer or physician who lounged about stores 
or parlors, careless, lazy, idling, until his case 
was called in court, or his patient was compelled 
to remind him that something more must be 
done to relieve him. 

There are professional obligations on a min- 
ister to " study to show himself a workman that 
needeth not be ashamed," apart from that high 
religious reason, to "show himself approved 
unto God." He receives his support and the 
support of his family — for what? For preach- 
ing so many sermons, administering the sacra- 
ments so often, marrying the happy, baptizing 
believers and their children, and burying the 
dead? No, but to devote himself to the care 
of souls, of which these are only parts of the 
office. He is bound to strive to reach men with 
the truth. He must therefore be studying both 
men and truth. He must strive as much as in 
him lies. If then souls are not saved, neither 
God nor man can blame him, nor can he re- 
proach himself. But if he do not do all he can 
for the salvation of souls, he is obtaining money 
on false pretenses, and that is very despicable. 
But no man ever did so strive and souls were 
not saved. The Holy Spirit is pledged to make 
that kind of work successful ; so every minister 
professes to believe. All who truly believe k do 
work and are not idlers. If a man be an idler 
in the ministry it is conclusive proof that he 
does not believe his own message, and to stay 
in the ministry of the gospel when one is an in- 
fidel, all men must feel to be despicable. 

Again : there is much to be learned from 
what Paul teaches Timothy in connection with 
the precept, "Let no man despise thy youth," 
when he adds, "Be thou an example of the be- 
lievers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in 
spirit, in faith, in purity." What will save a 
minister from loss of respect in his youth, will 
keep him in honor through all his ministry. 

If other men spoil their reputation by loose 



42 



A Despicable Minister, 



tongues and careless and corrupt speech, how 
very careful of his speech must be a minister of 
the gospel, who is supposed to be always hold- 
ing close to his own heart and conscience and 
to his fellow-men the realities of a world which 
rleshly eyes do not behold. A faithful servant 
of the gospel may be bright and cheery, and 
even gay in his temperament, but he must not 
be foolish and ridiculous. A clown who is smart 
in his profession may achieve quite a reputation, 
but a minister who is a buffoon loses the honors 
of the sanctuary and fails to gain even the ap- 
plause of the circus. 

Nor do sensible men like canting parsons. 
Cant is the routine use of words which were 
originally employed by those who attached an 
important signification to them, which signifi- 
cation the canting have entirely lost. One 
who cants is careful only of his words, that 
they shall be of the orthodox tone. A true 
brave man first finds his thoughts and settles 
his convictions, and then finds the words to fit. 
Words are things. To him who uses them 
they may be empty things, and he is despicable 
who employs the divine gift of speech to scatter 
emptiness over the world. 

Then the Apostle holds that a minister's in- 
tercourse with society may make him despica- 
ble. He must be somewhat in trade. He must 
buy his food and raiment. He must use money. 
A grasping, stingy, mean minister is contempti- 
ble. And so is a minister who allows others to 
cheat him just because he is " a parson." He 
ought to know his rights and dare maintain 
them. A man who has "fooled" the preacher 
during the week is not likely to have much re- 
spect for him on Sunday. There is a class of 
people who directly or indirectly levy " black 
mail" on ministers of the gospel, because they 
think that regard for the " sacred profession" 
will keep the minister from defending his rights. 
And then they despise him because he does not 
take care of himself. There is but one course 
in this matter to save ministers. They must 
never injure others, they must never resent in- 
juries, they must never keep men out of their 
dues, they must go beyond that, and in all their 
intercourse be useful to the souls and bodies of 
all men as far as practicable. But they must 
also let all men know that they have Paul's 
spirit, who always remembered that he was a 
minister of the gospel, but never forgot that he 
was a Roman citizen. In his trades, his amuse- 
ments, his mingling with society, he is to be an 
"example," a "pattern;" that is, he is to be 
such a man as he desires all other men to be- 



come under his preaching — true, firm, gentle, 
wise, and good. His aim is to make all men 
gentlemen, not in the technical caste sense in 
which that word is used in England, but in the 
sense of possessing the whole round of graces 
which make manhood complete, whether it be 
the manhood of a king or the manhood of a 
laboring peasant. He who is not aiming to be 
a gentleman is not fit to be a minister. 

The Apostle instances charity also. He who 
preaches the gospel of love cannot be respected 
if men perceive that he is not animated by a 
real and deep love for God, and an earnest 
brotherly affection for all the race for which 
Christ died. He may possess this " charity," as 
Paul called it, and be misunderstood. His love 
for God may lead him to exert himself to take 
care of the church, and the discipline he ad- 
ministers may bring on him the dislike of wrong 
doers. He cannot give all his money to each 
beggar, and that beggar may think him unchar- 
itable because he gives only one dollar and re- 
tains nine in his purse, not knowing that there 
are a dozen claimants for that remainder. But 
even discipline must be so administered, if pos- 
sible, as that those who endure it cannot con- 
sider that the pastor is despicable for want of 
charity. Many a boy has received chastisement 
at the hand of a father who so administered it 
that his child felt that the stripes struck deeper 
into the parent's heart than into the back on 
which they fell. So when a minister speaks a 
hard and painful truth, men must feel that he 
is "speaking the truth in love." So when he 
is compelled by duty to do unpleasant things, he 
must strive to avoid doing those things in an 
unpleasant way. And this temper must pervade 
his intercourse with society. 

The Apostle next instances spiritual-minded - 
ness ; which does not mean a neglect of the 
things which are seen and a contempt for them, 
a voluntary humiliation and castigation of one's 
self. It means that which saves us from being 
mere brutes. It means that habit of thought 
and feeling which recognizes the existence of 
the spiritual world and its subsistence under all 
forms of matter. It means such a condition of 
soul-health as permeates the things which are 
seen with the things which are not seen, and ir- 
radiates the transient clouds of matter with the 
splendors of the sun of soul. The minister de- 
sires all his people to live in that manner; in 
that manner he himself must live. 

The Apostle enjoins fidelity, entire faithful- 
ness to every trust, faithfulness toward God and 
man, faithfulness in allowing no evil to spread in 



A Despicable Minister. 



the church because it is the besetment of his 
special friends. He must deal honestly in the 
preaching of the word and in the administration 
of the discipline of his church. He must not be 
drawn from the discharge of any duty by fear, 
favor, affection, reward, or the hope of reward. 
He must endeavor to be as tender as a man and 
as impartial as an angel. 

The last thing mentioned by the Apostle is 
purity ; and no one can confine this to mere 
chastity, a perfectly apparent indispensable to 
the ministerial position ; it must cover his whole 
life. No minister of the gospel can corrupt his 
imagination with ideas of foulness and not come 
to be corrupt of speech, and no wit can redeem 
a preacher of the gospel from being despicable 
if " filthy communications" proceed out of his 
mouth. But all his habits are involved in this 
precept. He is to be careful to maintain physi- 
cal immaculateness as far as possible, keeping 
from himself all that makes him offensive, pre- 
serving his body and his apparel in the pureness 
befitting the sanctuary. He is admitted every- 
where. He visits the saloons of the refined, the 
chambers of the sick and sensitive, and the 
abodes of wretchedness. He mingles with wives, 
mothers, and daughters, who ought to feel the 
refining and purifying influence of the presence 
of a representative of Jesus. He takes into his 
arms the little babes, pure little messengers from 
the skies. They cannot complain, and they do 
not know what has hurt them ; but they cannot 
be taken into the arms of a man of unclean 
physical habits without injury. It is one of the 
highest compliments of confidence to be admit- 
ted into the nursery. He who enters should be 
at least physically pure. The minister may fall 
at his post in the pulpit. Going to his last bed 
he should lay aside his dress and lie down in his 
spOtlessness. His whole person, untainted and 
unstained, should be no unfit spectacle for 
angels and for men. 

Such is Paul's model. He who lives so shall 
save himself from being despicable. Nay, more. 
He shall save himself and those who hear him, 
Save himself? Why, of all things that is most 
necessary. All other things are worthless if he 
be not saved. He, too, must die. The work 
of his ministry must end. He must pass through 
the gate which separates the seen from the un- 
seen. Fancy that he has gained everything on 
earth — riches, delights, and fame. He passes 



the portals and stands within. His death is the 
signal for the uprising of his friends. He hears 
the roar of the world's applause beating on that 
gate outside and sending its long echoes back 
over the nations. He faces eternity, the meas- 
ureless blank of eternity, and cries, " What am 
I ?" " Damned !" shouts back to him some un- 
seen retribution out of the measureless blank 
of eternity. "Damned? Doomed? Condemn- 
ed ? Everlasting shame and contempt here, 
and all that fame in the nether world ?" Oh ! 
let us turn away from confusion so overwhelm- 
ing, to the sight of an honest, faithful, fearless 
servant of Jesus, who has finished his course with 
joy and the ministry he had received of the 
Lord Jesus. He, too, has passed the gate and 
timidly asked, ''What am I?" Sweeter than 
any earthly music comes a soft voice from the 
inmost unseen of eternity and gives him the 
assurance that he is "saved," Saved forever! 
He has failed of many things on earth ; many 
of his plans came to grief and disaster, but it is 
all over now, and he is saved. The supreme ob- 
ject of existence has been gained. No failures 
count as failures now. His faithfulness has won 
the respect of the world, and saved " those who 
heard him." His intense delight is increased 
by the presence of his family and friends and 
neighbors and parishioners, those who lavished 
favors upon him in life, to whom he had imparted 
spiritual blessings, and who now add by their 
rejoicing to the exceeding weight of his own 
glory. 

In view of all the rewards of a faithful minis- 
try and all the ruin of a ministry that is faithless, 
I beseech you to pray for me, my brethren, 
while I gird up the loins of my mind this day, 
and enter on new efforts for the salvation of 
men. If, as you look into the eyes of your pas- 
tor to-day, your hearts warm to him as a Chris- 
tian minister, and each of you say, " By God's 
help, I will stand by that man ; I will not weaken 
him by my faithlessness ; I will strengthen him 
by devoting myself to all my duties ; I will honor 
his work and aid his efforts for my salvation and 
the salvation of my family," we shall this day 
begin a work which, by God's blessing, shall 
make our church a power in this city, a work 
which shall save your pastor from being a des- 
picable failure, and gain for him that loftiest 
renown, Christ's benediction to a dying servant. 
" Well done, well done, good and faithful." 



VII. 

"ABSTAIN FROM ALL APPEARANCE OF EVIL." — I THESSALONIANS, V. 22. 



Here is a precept which in its most obvious 
and literal sense cannot be obeyed. It has 
therefore been a source of much trouble to 
many a conscientious Christian. The teach- 
ing of the Scripture must be obeyed : and here 
is a command which no strength of intellect, no 
skill, no high moral sense, no spotlessness of 
life and sanctity of soul can possibly fulfill. 

What is to be done in such case ? Why, 
plainly this : we must say before examining the 
original that there is some mistake of the trans- 
lation here, simply because we know that the 
Almighty Father will never require of his chil- 
dren an impossibility. That this is an impossi- 
bility, as our English version literally stands, 
needs no argument, while it is susceptible of al- 
most unlimited illustration. 

The "appearance" of material things does 
not depend entirely upon their form, but largely 
upon the medium through which, the light in 
which, and the eyes by which, they are seen. 
Some men are color-blind. Some men have 
the jaundice. All objects depend for their " ap- 
pearance" upon some light, and vary their ap- 
pearance with the amount of light and the angle 
at which the rays fall on them. 

This familiar truth in regard to objects per- 
ceived by the senses quite as much obtains in 
the realm of thought and feeling. Thoughts 
and feelings are still more liable to be misappre- 
hended, because they must be addressed by one 
soul to another through the senses, — the eye, 
the ear, the touch, by the pressure of the hand, 
by speech, by gesture, by writing. A thought 
or emotion, therefore, suffers a double refraction 
in passing from one mind to another. And thus 
it comes to pass that even in communities com- 
posed of most serene and wise intellects and lov- 
ing hearts, the appearance does not always match 
and represent the ideal. It is mere ordinary 
chanty to suppose that much of the misrepre- 
sentation of the world comes from misapprehen- 
sion, and when I find myself blundering so often 
I must forgive you if you so often misunder- 
stand me. 

The difficulty of the rule, as it stands in our 
version, is simply this: There is nothing so good 



that it may not appear evil ; to the evil, all, 
even best things, seem evil ; you can always make 
your act good, but you cannot always make it 
" appear" good to another ; the character of the 
act depends on you, the "appearance" of the 
act on him. Was there ever a virtue that did 
not seem a vice to a man's enemy ? Does not 
his liberality appear prodigality, his economy 
parsimony, his cheerfulness foolish levity, his 
high conscientiousness puritanism, his temper- 
ance asceticism, his courage fool-hardiness, his 
devotion hypocrisy? How is it possible to 
avoid such judgments as these unless a man 
could have the whole world for his friends? 
Can the Heavenly Father demand more of you 
than that you really be true and faithful and 
pure ? Must you also fritter your strength away 
in striving to make your good life seem good in 
the eyes of perverse men ? No, my brother, 
there is no such foolish requisition in all God's 
holy word. Your life must be essentially good. 
Leave it then to take naturally what appearance 
it will. To attempt a literal obedience to this 
command is to make yourself a consummate 
hypocrite and to sacrifice the substance for the 
shadow. 

Just fancy a man trying to do it. He is mak- 
ing all persons about him see the good that is 
in him. Among them must be some vile souls, 
and if his acts appear good to them there must 
be some wrong in those actions, for these peo- 
ple have long ago said with Satan, "Evil be 
thou my good." The same action, in the same 
form, under the same circumstances will appear 
good or bad as the beholders see it. Some men 
are purblind. They cannot distinguish objects 
in an ordinary room, but in the open field a 
sunburst startles them, and they perceive the 
difference between light and darkness. So 
sometimes a good act is so conspicuously and 
splendidly good that it bursts upon the sight of 
a sinner like a vision of a higher sphere. But 
ordinarily he does not discern the goodness. A 
rose-bush, with a sweet child's pure garment 
thrown upon it, will rise like a frightful spectre 
to the eyes of a superstitious rustic as he tim- 
idly walks his way by night. It will certainly 



Avoiding Sins of every Appearance. 



45 



occur that while you are striving to make your 
life 4 'appear" good to some, it must by those 
very efforts appear evil to others. 

I should not have dwelt on this subject so long 
if good men had not long suffered from the ap- 
parent strictness of this precept, and its obvious 
difficulty in practical life, and if it had not been 
made an implement in the hands of fanatics to 
embarrass and distress weak men, who are striv- 
ing to be good. A man does a really good thing. 
It cannot avoid seeming wrong just because it is 
so unusually good. His fanatical neighbor re- 
proves him, and says : " You must not do so 
again ; your neighbors say that you are vain, or 
proud." What is the poor man to do? He is 
cleanly in his habits, and neat in his dress, and 
polite in his manners ; they say he is a dandy. 
He must avoid that "appearance of evil," and 
so he neglects his person, and his dress, and his 
address. Then they say that he is a sloven. If 
he strike out a course, a golden mean between 
finical fastidiousness and gross slovenliness, and 
adhere to what suits him, he is regarded as prim 
and pragmatic. 

The attempt to gain the favorable verdict of 
all men is not only impracticable, but it is de- 
moralizing. It occupies a man with appear- 
ances, and not realities; with the outside, and 
not the inside ; with his reputation, and not 
with his character. There can be devised no 
shorter cut to thorough hypocrisy than a con- 
stant effort to "abstain from all appearance of 
evil." What then did the Apostle mean ? If 
you hold to these precise English words, you 
come near his meaning by a different colloca- 
tion : "Abstain from evil, of all appearance." 
Against what was he warning his Thessalonian 
brethren? Against something apparent, — or, 
against something real ? Against what they 
could not avoid, — or, against what they could 
avoid ? Surely the latter. Look at the context. 
In the verse next preceding, he says : "Prove 
all things; hold fast that which is good." As if 
he had said : Do not depend on appearances ; 
prove the thing ; it may appear evil, when in 
very deed it is most good ; if you find it really 
good, hold fast to it, no matter how evil it seems 
in some men's eyes. His doctrine simply is, 
Hold to the good, and keep frojn the evil, regard- 
less of appearances. This is the very reverse of 
what some fanatics teach, and all hypocrites 
practice. To them, reputation is everything, 
character nothing. They reverse the old max- 
im, and seek to seem, and not to be. Not so 
Paul. Character was the first thing with him. 
He would take care of his character. He left 



his reputation very much to take care of itself, 
believing that a good character was the most 
probable security for a good reputation. Not 
that he loved his reputation less, but that he 
loved his character more. And so he would 
have his brethren ; and so, dear people of my 
congregation, I would have you. 

The lesson is, total abstinence from what is 
really evil. The complementary thought is, 
that evil can never be good by a mere change of 
appearance. The first thing you must decide, 
in regard to every opinion and habit of thought, 
every emotion and habit of feeling, every act 
and course of conduct, is, whether it is really 
and essentially evil. Your standard of evil is 
not to be the effect of an action on your own 
comfort or position in society. The only stand- 
ard is the will of God. What pleases God is 
good, and what displeases God is evil, If evil, 
it is to be avoided, no matter what flattering 
promises it gives of pleasure or of profit. 

To make this a useful and practical discourse, 
let us look at some of the ways in which we 
may follow what is really evil because its appear- 
ance is that of being good. For that is our 
danger, the danger of most men, the danger of 
all men who are honestly striving to be good. 
Generally men do not commit sin because they 
prefer the evil on account of its being evil, but 
that they are deceived by some appearance of 
good ; otherwise Satan would never have occa- 
sion to disguise himself as an angel of light. 

First of all, in the department of thought, it 
is quite easy to be betrayed into following the 
essentially evil because it is apparently good. 
That may come in the highest range of thought 
about the most important things of humanity 
The most important thing about any man is his 
faith. Conduct is the child of faith. A thor- 
ough belief in a real truth is life : it will repro- 
duce itself in the outward action. Action is a 
mere form of life, faith is life itself. Even here 
how easy it is to find real evil that is apparently 
good. To strive to compel men to uniformity 
seems a good, whereas it is really an evil. One 
may even quote Scripture in justification and 
say, "Is it not written one faith V A man may 
forget that the essential principle may be one 
while the phenomenal presentation may be man- 
ifold. There is " one hope," but its witchery 
of enticement is a thousand-fold. There is one 
love, but its charming exhibitions are indescri- 
bably manifold. There is one truth, but its 
forms are as countless as the combinations of 
human words, human thoughts, and possible 
human standpoints. There is one law of reflec- 



46 



Avoiding Sins of every Appearance. 



tion for light, but no two eyes can possibly see 
the same rainbow, but each does see a rainbow, 
each rainbow being the product of the one law 
and the several positions of the observer. The 
ray of light is refracted in passing from denser 
to rarer medium. You put a portion of a 
straight rod in a vessel of water. It appears 
broken or bent at the point where the water 
meets the air. It only appears so. It is really 
straight. The air and the water have not 
changed the rod. They have changed the 
course of the lines of the light coming from the 
rod to your eye. If you so altered the rod that 
it should appear straight when a part is in the 
water and a part in the air, it would be in reality 
crooked, and would be seen to be crooked if all 
were in the air or all in the water. Human in- 
tellects are media, some rare, some dense, some 
denser, some densest. You can succeed in mak- 
ing a truth seem straight to all only by making 
it crooked, that is, by making it no truth. 

All compulsory uniformity is pregnant with 
falsehoods. The Holy Office of the Inquisition 
produced cruelties among good men and hypoc- 
risies among bad. Uniformity belongs only to 
the outward, unity to the inward. In its essence 
truth has always unity, but in development 
seldom uniformity. It takes on as many forms 
as creative energy does. Uniformity is against 
God's will. It is therefore evil. Abstain from 
it, no matter what appearance it may assume. 
It would be delightful to have all men see every 
truth at the same angle. Would it ? Do you not 
see that it is impossible for any two men to do 
that ? If there were but two men in all the uni- 
verse, and one should profess to see the same 
physical object in the same line and at the same 
angle as the other, he would either be totally 
mistaken or be uttering a falsehood. 

The laws of impenetrability prevails in mind 
as in matter. The Blessed Virgin, and St. John, 
and St. Mary of Magdala, stood by the cross. 
All saw Jesus at the same moment. Each saw 
Him in a different light. What was true of their 
bodily senses was true of their intellects and 
hearts. "That same Jesus" was a different Je- 
sus to the Mother, the Disciple, and the Adorer. 
Blessed be God that there are as many views of 
Jesus or any other Truth as there are eyes to 
behold ! 

You desire to see all the churches one, all the 
denominations one, all believing the same truth 
the same way, and performing the same worship 
with the same rites. Give over the effort. If 
you could succeed, what a Devil's Church you 
would have ! No. Let grace be natural and 



nature be gracious. Gave room for God. Let 
His Holy Spirit work. And as that Spirit gave 
largest exhibitions of variety in unity in the 
realm of nature, so will it in the realm of 
grace. Would you abolish species and genera 
in plants, and have all vegetable products the 
same ? Why should you attempt it in intellect, 
in belief? God will not have it so : you. cannot 
make it so. Abstain from the evil 01 compul- 
sory uniformity although it have the appearance 
of the good of regularity. 

The next illustration may seem to you to be 
over against that which I have just employed. 
In this case the "angel of light" is liberty, and 
the " Satan" is licentiousness. Abstain from 
this evil, whatever may be the beauty of its 
appearance. There is something very captivat- 
ing in " liberty." The very word sounds open 
and breezy. It is a large and wealthy word. 
There is a fine chord in every heart which 
responds to it with a thrill. Liberty has been 
made a queen and a goddess. More money 
has been spent for her, and more blood 
shed for her, than for any other. The poets 
have laid their best crowns on her head, and the 
orators have filled the world with her praises. 
The demagogues know the power of the catch- 
word of her name, and have drawn thousands 
to the field in the professed cause of liberty, 
where they were ignorantly shedding their blood 
to cement the chains which tyranny had fastened 
on their fellows. When one recollects the his- 
tory of the race, one is not surprised that when 
that splendid woman, Madame Roland, amid 
the horrors of the French Revolution, was go- 
ing to her doom, she should have saluted the 
statue of Liberty with the bitter exclamation, 
" O Liberty, what outrages are perpetrated in- 
thy name !" 

It is exceedingly difficult to draw the line 
between licentiousness and liberty, and hence 
the danger is greater. The name and attrac- 
tions of one are used to give fatal power to the 
acts of the other. True freedom of intellect 
and heart and life consists in voluntary and 
exact obedience to the law of God. A compul- 
sory obedience is mere hypocrisy. An inexact 
obedience is a perpetual weakness. Every step 
taken in the statutes of the Lord, with a free will, 
is a step of freedom. David perceived this when 
he said, in the nineteenth Psalm, "I will walk 
at liberty, for I seek Thy precepts." But, the 
moment a man lifts his foot from the law of the 
Lord, and sets it down outside, he places it in 
the nets of evil, and is ensnared. But the 
modern and atheistic idea of liberty is the 



Avoiding Sins of every Appearance. 47 



absence of all law, or the refusal to be controlled 
by law. In other words, it is licentiousness. 
Avoid it, no matter what its appearance. Re- 
member that the huzzy Licentiousness is no 
more the stately and chaste virgin Liberty, than 
the bedizzened harlot whom the madmen of the 
French Revolution drew about in a chariot and 
enthroned as Goddess of Reason was in reality 
Reason's lofty self. Remember that when you 
set yourself free from law you set yourself free 
from strength and safety and love and faith 
and truth. 

How vast are the hull and rigging of the 
largest vessel on the ocean, and how small is 
the helm ; and yet that little helm turns that 
great bulk whithersoever the helmsman listeth. 
Suppose the great vessel should say, " I will not 
endure this impertinent interference, this in- 
cessant control," and should throw the helms- 
man overboard, and unship both helm and 
rudder. She would be free then, would she 
not ? Yes, but a free prey to all winds and waves, 
tossed about over the stormy sea, lashed by its 
billows, and crushed in its troughs. Is that the 
freedom to be desired ? And yet that is the 
idea of this age. Parental control, ecclesiastical 
discipline, civil government, are all to be over- 
turned. The State, the Church, the Family 
are to be overthrown, for men must be free ! 
It is pitiful and painful to see human beings 
struggling to be free to be hated, free to starve, 
free to die, free to be damned. Brethren, be 
wise. Avoid this evil. Remember that no 
splendor of dress can make a leper clean, and 
no brilliancy of appearance can make an evil 
good. 

Let us also illustrate this theme by looking at 
some of the evils of our temper, which put on 
deceitful appearances of good. The dogma of 
infallibility is not a mere ecclesiastical develop- 
ment. The seed of it is in every human heart. 
No man will claim it in so many words ; but 
who does not feel it ? Or, if we are all uncon- 
scious of its existence, who does not act upon 
it ? So few of us have any horror of the re- 
sponsibility of sitting as judges, but are ready 
to go on the bench at any time and try any 
cause, however important and complicated, and 
however slender the evidence on either side. 
We pronounce judgment as if there could be no 
appeal, and act upon such sentences as final. 
Nay, more. There is a disposition on the part 
of many to go beyond, and keep surveillance of 
society, making themselves general detectives. 
They are often heresy-hunters. They are often 
self-constituted Health Boards, enforcing social 



sanitary regulations of their own. The plain 
fact is that they are censorious. They hold 
every man guilty until he proves his innocence. 
Every act is considered to have sprung from a 
wrong motive until the contrary shall be made 
to appear. 

The reason they do not " abstain from" this 
"evil" is, because it has the "appearance" of 
good. It seems to evince a high moral sense. 
It looks like loyalty to truth and to high right. 
It looks unselfish. The man is not seeking to 
be popular ! He dares oppose a popular vice, 
and a popular sinner ! He dares beard the lion 
in his den ! He is a martyr to his sense of 
right ! It is good and grand ! He applauds 
himself. He feels that others ought to applaud 
him. He undertakes to execute his own sen- 
tences. If he cannot hang the condemned, he 
treats him as an outlaw. If he cannot literally 
transport him, so far as he is able, he socially 
sends him "to Coventry." The condemned 
is treated like a leper, like a lost man. 

All this is done that the purity of the judge 
shall be evinced. Men and women seem to 
think that kindness to a sinner is indorsement 
and participation of his sin. Hence the evil of 
social ostracism. A man that has fallen has so 
few helps to rise, and a woman who has fallen — 
God help her ! — has no aids but those which 
God gives. "Abstain from this evil" of cen- 
soriousness of temper, whatever "appearance" 
of devotion to the right it may have. Be careful 
of your "virtuous indignation." I never find 
the least difficulty in getting up the requisite 
amount of virtuous indignation on any befitting 
occasion ; but, brethren, I do find it very difficult 
to keep my indignation virtuous. While burn- 
ing the sin I ought to hate, it will so soon begin 
to flame up and burn the sinner, whom I ought 
to love. 

There is many a vice, very ruinous to the 
moral character, which is merely an exaggera- 
tion of a virtue. Excess of good may be evil. 
Excess of elements that minister to life may 
result in death. It is well to have the requisite 
moisture in the body, but dropsy is an evil. 
All the more, because it is an evil which has a 
side that looks toward virtue, must we abstain 
from it. It is necessary only to point out a few 
of these, and you must supply other illustrations 
from your own lives and your observation on 
society. 

There is an evil of careless prodigality which 
calls itself by many an alias of good names, 
such as liberality, generosity, open-handedness. 
It is an evil. It leads men to be careless and 



48 



Avoiding Sins of every Appearance. 



lazy about their expenditures. A man with 
such a disposition never troubles himself to ex- 
amine the claims of applicants for his time or 
his money. That would be troublesome. The 
result is hurtful to all parties. Because there 
are so many easy-givers we have so many easy- 
beggars. It is injurious to give to the unde- 
serving as it is injurious to withhold from those 
who do deserve. Many a man feels that he is 
most charitable and liberal who is merely care- 
less. He says, " I must have given away ten 
or twelve thousand dollars in the last five years." 
Mark : he does not know whether it is ten or 
twelve. The fact is, he does not know how much. 
The man who walks through the streets talk- 
ing or thinking, and pulls something out of his 
pocket for every beggar without looking the ap- 
plicant in the face or recollecting him ten minutes 
after, is not charitable. He is a thriftless prod- 
igal. True charity and true liberality and true 
generosity know how much, and to whom, and 
why, they gave ; not in remembrance of self- 
complaisance, but that they may see how much 
more they can do. Abstain from the evil of 
prodigality which has the appearance of liber- 
ality. 

On the other hand, there is the evil which I 
should call stinginess, if Webster had not de- 
clared that word "not admissible into elegant 
writing," and which, therefore, I suppose must 
be classically denominated parsimony. Whatever 
its name, it is the grip of selfishness on money. 
It is the vice that makes a man feel that it is 
better ninety-nine worthy cases suffer than that 
one unworthy case be helped. It is a stone- 
blind vice. Men know when they are liars, 
thieves, murderers, but they do not know when 
they are covetous. Every sin committed by man 
against man has been admitted by some one 
who was guilty, except two ; and one of them is 
covetousness. It puts on so good an " appear- 
ance !" It is called among men prudence, econ- 
omy, thrift, any word which glosses over the 
inner viciousness. It was so in the time of 
David, who said, "Men will praise thee when 
thou doest well to thyself." But "abstain" 
from this "evil" of doing so well for yourself 
that you can do nothing for others, and remem- 
ber that the Lord will praise thee when thou 
doest well to another. 

There is another " evil" which must be men- 
tioned in the connection. It is the evil of re- 
gardlessness of appearances. We are not to do- 
a thing that is wrong because it has the appear- 
ance of right in the eyes of many, and we are 
bound to do good, however it may seem to oth- 



ers; but we are also to see to it that our " good 
be not evil spoken of." There is in some men a 
swaggering boastfulness of independence of the 
opinion of others, of determination to do just 
what they think right, and of regardlessness of 
the feelings of others. They think it looks well, 
There is an appearance of stern virtue in all 
this, of character, of independence. Such men 
will be very much pleased with the former part 
of this discourse, which they will indiscrimi- 
nately wrest to confirm them in their "evil." 
That is always the fate of truth. Error would be 
mobbed in the streets if she did not go disguised 
in the garb of Truth. But I now warn such men 
that no such meaning is in what the apostle 
teaches and what I am enforcing. The lesson is 
that we must abstain from what is evil, no matter- 
how beautiful it may appear ; and to them the 
lesson is that their want of thought, of prudence, 
of sense of propriety, is "evil," although it look 
so big and smart and manly to them. 

Surely no Christian man will take on an ap- 
pearance of evil. Any voluntary hazarding of 
the appearance of evil is most foolish, if not 
criminal. No man has a right on any pretense 
to " give a just offence to the moral sentiments" 
of the community. And so, while as the words 
stand in our version, the precept is impractica- 
ble ; as the apostle taught it is one of the plainest 
of all practical moral precepts, and in any collo- 
cation of the words there is the intimation of a 
secondary lesson very important to us all, 
namely, that we are not only to abstain from all 
kinds and forms of evil, but also, as much as in 
us lies, from appearing to do evil when our in- 
tent is to do right. Our main strength is to be 
directed against "evil." From that we must 
"abstain," absolutely and resolutely; and then 
if there be any moral strength left we may ex- 
pend that on making the world see how reso- 
lutely and absolutely we are so abstaining. 

Let me not close this discourse, brethren, with- 
out calling your attention to the fundamental 
truth which underlies this precept, namely, that 
total obedience to the whole law of God is im- 
perative. In regard to all His holy command- 
ments our obedience must be universal and 
prompted by the love we bear our Heavenly 
Father. We cannot choose among the statutes 
and commandments of the Lord, and 
" Compound for sins we are inclined to 
By damning those we have no mind to." 
It is the law of the Lord. To disobey is evil 
and only evil. Loving obedience is good and 
only good. If we do not love the Father all His 
commandments will be grievous, but love will 



Avoiding Sins of every Appearance. 



49 



make all light. Fashion and popularity should 
not be allowed for a moment to sway us on such 
a question. Sins take their turn, like other de- 
formities, in being fashionable. We know that 
deformities sometimes come into fashion. A 
woman has a curved spine. She contrives a 
dress to conceal the deformity ; whereupon all 
the followers of fashion deform themselves by 
their dresses. A lady has a wen on her head, 
and she naturally does not desire the ugly thing 
to be always in the sight of her family, and con- 
trives a head-dress to conceal it ; whereupon all 
the followers of fashion appear as if they had 
wens on their heads. So sins are made fashion- 
able. Out of fashion the sin is hideous. In 
fashion the sin is tolerable and perhaps attract- 



ive. But in fashion or out of fashion the sin is. 
sin, the evil is evil, and no ceremonials of reli- 
gion or elegancies of etiquette can consecrate a 
lie. The Satan is not in the fearful picture of 
hoofs and horns and tails, nor the angel in the 
white robe, the downy wing, and the lily- 
wand. The Satan is in the heart of evil, the 
angel in the heart of love. Let me beseech you 
not to be carried away by appearances, but re- 
solutely abstain from evil always, and always 
most resolutely when the evil is most attractive. 
And then shall be fulfilled to us the prayer of 
the apostle : The very God of peace shall sanc- 
tify us wholly, and our whole spirit and soul and 
body be preserved blameless unto the coming of 
our Lord Jesus Christ. 



VIII. 

§x$kt and P(»¥ttitt0. 

" WEEPING MAY ENDURE FOR A NIGHT, BUT JOY COMETH IN THE MORNING. "—PSALM XXX. 5. 



The material universe is a realization of 
God's ideals. 

All things that come within the circle of 
man's knowledge, and address him through his 
senses, subsisted in the thoughts of God before 
they existed in the forms of matter. The recol- 
lection of this may help us in many investiga- 
tions. 

"In the beginning," when God began to 
express His mighty thoughts, there was only 
the absence of everything. In the opening of 
Genesis there is a simple and sublime statement 
of the formlessness, the emptiness, the lightless- 
ness, which describe the absence of every 
material thing. Where the universe was to be 
was merely what Moses calls "a deep," what 
Shelley calls an intense inane. The first 
creation of God was a fountain of light, heat, 
and electricity. The solar orb was to be a ruler 
among the things that were to be. This triple 
energy of light and heat and electricity was to 
be the upholding of the vast creation. "And 
the evening and the morning were the first 
day." 

The first two of these imponderable energies 
have been known to men from the beginning of 
the race, and they have been applied to the 
interior operations of human life in a way that 
is marvellous for the unanimity of the idea. In 
all ages, climes, and tongues, Thought has been 
supposed to be represented by Light, and Passion, 
whether love or hate, by Heat. There was still 
in the operations of the human spirit something 
quite distinct from both these, a swift, alert, 
vigorous, decisive energy, which drove passion 
and thought, love and wisdom, into action. 
Modern science has shown that from the begin- 
ning electricity was with heat and light, often 
producing them both, so that hereafter into 
common speech may come as clear a recognition 
of this power and this likeness as there has been 
of the power of Love and its likeness to heat, and 
the power of Wisdom and its likeness to light. 

We thus come to see that the physical 
universe is a mirror at once of the mind of God 
and the mind of man. " The invisible things of 
him, since the creation of the world, are clearly 



seen, being understood by the things that are 
made." As men are the children of God, they 
inherit His traits, so that both in creation and 
generation God has reproduced Himself, and 
the spirits of the children He has begotten are 
likewise mirrored in the physical universe. 

The greatest work of the highest science is 
read in this triplicity, God in Thought, in Love, 
in Energy; God in the Father, in the Son, in 
the Holy Ghost ; God mirrored in the physical 
universe; the physical universe in Light, in 
Heat, in Electricity; Man in Intellection, in 
Emotion, in Will ; Man mirrored in the physical 
universe, Thought in Light, Love in Heat, and 
Will in Electricity. 

What we call inspiration in the poets is merely 
a glimpse of these correspondences and this con- 
nection; but their conceptions are always somehow 
in error of excess or deficiency ; there is always 
a blurr. It is not so in the imagery of the holy 
men who were inspired by the Holy Ghost to 
look down into the heart of things and create 
for us types from the archetypal forms of 
thought. They are always certain, exact, un- 
erring. If they ever seem otherwise, it is because 
we have not yet become able to understand 
them. Their figures of speech are never ran- 
dom sallies of the fancy, never careless ornaments 
of discourse, never meretricious. They are 
invitations to profound thought. In any simile 
of David or Isaiah or Jesus, there is greater 
depth than in any argument of Plato or Socrates 
or Aristotle. In the light of the truth already 
stated, we come this morning to explore one 
of these beautiful and expressive figures : 
"Weeping may endure for a night, but joy 
cometh in the morning. '\ And we come not to 
play with the glintings of its poetic excellence, 
but to discover what truth needful for our 
souls lies wrapped in the beauty of the form of 
the thought. 

No natural phenomena are more familiar to 
us than those of Night and Morning. Poetry, 
painting, and statuary have regarded them in 
their most picturesque aspects. Piety has sung 
its soothing vesper-hymn, or joined the voices 
of nature in matins of praise. Science has found 



JV'ight and Morning. 



SI 



volumes in the gathering shades of evening, 
and the broadening light of daybreak. All the 
physical, intellectual, commercial, and social, 
perhaps we might venture to add, and religious, 
arrangements of mankind adjust themselves to 
these natural divisions of time. Let us partially 
re-examine them, not for intellectual recreation, 
but for spiritual profit. 

When the axial revolution of the earth brings 
night to the side of the planet we inhabit, we 
are first of all conscious of the departure of light. 
That is so obtrusive a phenomenon that all see 
it. It is not quite so open to observation that a 
change has taken place in our thermal and elec- 
tric condition, but it is no less true that the 
active agencies of the great source of heat and 
electricity have ceased to play upon us as well 
as that of light. There is absence of light, de- 
parture of heat by radiation, and a change in 
the electric condition, and these affect all plants, 
all beasts, all men. 

The difficulty of seeing causes a suspension • 
of work. Men's restlessness leads to the produc- 
tion of artificial lights, but these must neces- 
sarily be limited. A light-house may show 
where the coast is, but it does not reveal the 
rocks. We may make a light for our books, 
but it is always more or less injurious to the 
eyes. We can never make night day. Men 
cannot be- about factories and shops and 
wharves and farms. Work must be suspended 
wholly, or prosecuted partially under great dis- 
advantages. 

Sleep comes with inactivity. Flowers fold up 
their petals or droop in the night-drip. Birds 
hush their songs, and cover their young ; and 
those that wake are exceptional, like the night- 
ingale, " most musical, most melancholy;" and 
the whip-poor-will, most melancholy, most un- 
musical ; or are stupid birds, like owls ; or foul, 
like bats — birds of evil omen. Even wild beasts 
lie down in their lair, except perhaps the sneak- 
ing fox or prowling jackal, whom hunger drives 
through darkness to the prey. The innocent 
and the good are asleep. 

The bad are awake, — the thief, the burglar, 
the adulterer, the murderer, and she whose 
"feet go down to death," whose "steps take 
hold on hell." The baby-boy sleeps in the 
cradle, the young scapegrace is in the midst of 
his revels. Men separate. They have crowded 
the streets and the markets during the day, the 
markets and streets are deserted at night. The 
commingled battalions of hostile armies draw 
off to their several camps, for the bugle sounds 
truce when the night-clouds once lower. 



All things seem exaggerated in the sad light 
of the stars, in the gloaming of evening, and in 
the gloom of night. Natural objects take on 
mystical shapes, and suggest preternatural fan- 
cies of the grotesque or the horrible. 

Night is the time to weep. Griefs, that are 
kept in abeyance by business or social duties, 
find vent in sighs and groans and tears. David 
weeps for his fallen Absalom, Eli mourns over 
his dissolute sons. The wife, who had been all 
day pale because of the sin of her husband, sits 
in the flush of her sorrow, because she now 
ceases to control her countenance when none 
can see her weep, and make her tears a fresh 
disgrace to the man she loves. The merchant, 
on the eve of bankruptcy, who has been so 
cheery all day that none might discover his 
plight, now walks the apartments of his mansion, 
creeps in to gaze upon children happy in their 
sleep, and then goes to wring his hands in bitter 
anticipation of the crush of his fortunes, and the 
change in the circumstances of his children 
which shall come with the morrow. Unrequited 
love looks at the cold stars, looks at the be- 
gloomed garden, cries and has no response, 
weeps and has no soother. The sinner, smit- 
ten with a sense of his guilt, cowers in the dark- 
ness, wets his pillow with his tears, fills the 
shades of the night with frightful images of re- 
tribution, and fears to sleep, lest he wake in the 
hell of an everlasting night. Even physical pain 
intensifies in the darkness. O how the night 
lengthens. O how all sufferers "long for the 
morning." How longing for the morning be- 
comes in all climes the representation of the 
most intense desires of the soul. And thus 
night represents Ignorance, Inaction, Separa- 
tion, Sorrow, Death. 

We know the one cause of all these things : 
WE HAVE BEEN TURNED AWAY FROM THE 
SUN. Our conditions of light, heat, and elec- 
tricity have changed, and these three are the 
promoters of life and growth, of health and 
activity, of strength and beauty. 

How striking a representation is this of the 
dark side of man's spiritual experience ! The 
Night of the Soul ! how desolate and drear it 
is ! In the first place, the soul is suffering the 
absence of light. Darkness lies on all the 
realm of thought. Artificial lights are em- 
ployed, but nothing can be seen naturally in 
light that is not from the sun, for God created 
all things to be seen in sunlight. Hence comes 
all the confusion of thought which belongs to 
an unregenerate man. He thinks he sees ; he 
does see ; but nothing is in the right light ; 



52 Night and 



there is a mist and gloom, an inaccuracy and 
exaggeration, a disturbance of shades because 
of the absence of /flight which belongs to him. 
He sees by the cold light of stars, but they are 
the suns of other systems, not his. They are 
unhelpful, and rather aggravating. When the 
light of the glory of God, shining in the face of 
Jesus, who is the Sun of Righteousness, fails to 
fall on any soul, how can he see God and man 
and sin and duty — or any other thing — in a 
right light ? 

All the emotional nature goes wrong or 
grows cold, and becomes torpid when that light 
is gone. Men and women love, but love nei- 
ther wisely nor well. Good angels go away. 
Bad passions come. It is night. The hyena, 
the bat, the owl — birds that defile and beasts 
that raven, are swinging or raging through the 
heart. All forms of selfishness, hatred, and 
uncleanness revel nnder the cover of the dark- 
ness. 

The will grows sleepy in the gloom. The 
electric influence of the Holy Ghost is withheld. 
The quick of the soul has been benumbed. 
There is still life. The man is alive to grief. 
He feels that something is absent the presence 
of which is desirable. If it were possible that 
the earth could be stopped on its axis for thirty 
years, and the portion of the planet which was 
in the dark last midnight should so remain 
through all that space of time, with no change 
in its physical condition except those which one 
night makes, — a man growing up under such a 
state of affairs would feel that something was 
lacking which his nature needed, even if he 
could not conjecture what that something was. 

The trouble of the unregenerate heart is that 

IT IS TURNED AWAY FROM THE SUN OF THE 

Soul, Jesus Christ, the centre of the system of 
the universe. So long as it is night, weeping 
will endure ; and night will last until we turn 
ourselves to THE SUN. 

With Night, Day stands in such splendid con- 
trast ! There comes a twilight after the deep 
darkness. There was a twilight in the evening 
which broadened into thickest gloom, but this 
twilight broadens into greater light. As one 
watches the horizon at the east, one sees first 
the faintest insinuation of light, a modest look 
into the face of the darkness, which is quickly 
withdrawn and then repeated, and again and 
again, growing bolder, until the little ray of 
light holds its place, and another comes to keep 
it company ; and Day is coming ; and the stars 
that were so bold in the darkness begin to pale, 
and as the Day comes on they sink deep up 



Morning. 



into the skies out of our sight, and Night is 
pushed further and further westward, retreating 
before the conquering Day, now flaming up and 
touching every cloud and mist and mountain-top 
and steeple and window-pane with fresh glory, 
until all the landscape is aglow, and Nature 
wipes the dewy tears of darkness from her eyes. 

With the sun comes not only light, but heat 
and electricity as well. These three are full of 
life. Everywhere there is animation. The 
birds have felt prophetic thrills of the coming 
of the morning, and the lark has gone up to 
his observatory in the high air to look out 
for the coming brightness. Domestic animals 
revive. The horse neighs in his stable, the 
sheep bleats in its fold, for the voice of chanti- 
cleer has roused them. Men go forth to their 
work. The team is driven afield. The band 
is put on the wheel of the factory, and the hum 
begins in the workshops of the artisans and the 
market-place of the traders. Love gives its 
morning kiss. Parents and children salute. 
Men rush out to business, and children to play. 
The streets are thronged. Bells ring. 

Life has come back with light. All the inno- 
cent, the good, the gifted, the active souls are 
at work. The owl has shut down his huge 
eyes, the bat folded its leathern wings, the snake 
lies still in the sunlight, the wild beast retreats 
from the sounds of humanity. The police eye 
of the sun has sent thief and robber and burglar 
and murderer away from their destructive work. 
Men collect for consultation and co-operation. 
The face of a man sharpeneth the face of his 
fellow-men. A glowing magnetism is generated. 
To earnest thought and anxious business and 
panting pleasure the hours seem too short. ' 
Even the sufferer is relieved. As he lies on his 
cot in the hospital he ceases to be annoyed by 
the ticking of the clock, which had seemed all 
night to be a mechanical contrivance for length- 
ening the hours. Light is let into the chamber, 
new warmth, new electric influences. Friends 
come and go. There are voices in the street, 
in the hall, by the bedside. Even in his bitter 
pain he is helped by the grasp of a friendly 
hand, or the glance of a friendly eye. The 
hours are shortened. All brains, all hearts, all 
hands are at work. Humanity is advanced, and 
civilization makes progress. For weeping we 
have the night, for joy we have the day. 

We know the cause of all the delightful 
phenomena which succeed the doleful night : 
WE HAVE BEEN TURNED TO THE SUN. 

In this we have a striking representation of 
the bright side of man's spiritual experience ! 



Night and 



The Day of the Soul ! How bright, how joyful 
it is ! Light has come back. Things are seen 
as they really are. The eyes of the mind are 
not subjected to the torture or to the unper- 
ceived injuriousness of artificial lights. Con- 
fusions disappear. A man sees things in a 
right light, unexaggerated. Superstitions and 
fears and images of grotesque distortions are all 
scattered. His heart grows better, calmer, 
warmer, purer, stronger. 

The good heat is doing its work. It is not the 
enervating heat of the furnace and the grate, 
but the healthful heat of the sun. He grows 
inwardly wholesome. Bad spirits flee away. 
Good angels and sweet loves come back into his 
heart. The bats and hyenas of suspicion, hate, 
and revenge are driven forth. Hisses as of 
serpents are no more heard, but the voice of the 
turtle-dove is cooing in his spirit. 

His will receives a tonic. The electric influ- 
ence of the Holy Ghost is on his soul. His will 
girds up itself. He may not have been able to 
study the causes of this great change, but he is 
joyfully conscious of them. Recently our sci- 
entific men have made great discoveries of the 
sanitary influence of sunlight. Some French 
physicians give their patient sun-baths, submit- 
ting the person to the direct rays of the sun. 
This is said to produce some of the results 
which are supposed to be caused by taking iron, 
being, however, a better tonic. Here again 
modern science is corroborating the songs of the 
old inspired poets. The Sun of Righteousness 
is the health of the countenance of those 
who live in His light. 

The regenerated man has joy because he has 
been turned to THE SUN OF THE SOUL, Jesus 
Christ, the centre of the system of the uni- 
verse. So long as it is day we have the joy 
of the day ; and day will last until we turn our- 
selves AWAY FROM THE SUN. 

Another lesson of importance is this : God's 
works go forward in the order of — first Night, 
then Morning. 

In the earliest recorded syllables of time we 
have the original chronological statement of 
Moses, "And the Evening and the Morning 
were the First Day." It was first Darkness, 
then Light. The day did not begin with bright- 
ness but with gloom. The processions of his- 
tory have walked in that way ever since, and 
God's mighty doings have been wrought in that 
type. It is interesting to trace it in every 
department of nature and of man. It seems to 
have been one of the deepest and most per- 
vading ideas in the infinite mind. Where what 



Morning. 58 



we call Nature now stands was original silent 
darkness of nothingness. Then chaos surged 
tumultuously, in the disorderly rout of things 
that had been created by God in the impenetra- 
ble dark. It was " Tohoo," says Moses in the 
Hebrew. It was " Bohoo," he adds. The pon- 
derous mass was a ponderous mess. Through 
the emptiness shapeless matter rolled and fell 
and rose and jerked and slid, unguided by the 
wisdom of law, unheld by the hand of gravi- 
tation, confusion smiting confusion, until what- 
ever was was utterly confounded. There was 
no creature to see and suffer. It was a sea that 
would have sounded like a hell behiifrricaned if 
there had been an atmosphere, a shore, and an 
ear. But of ear and shore and atmosphere and 
meteorologic law there was nothing. 

So in the darkness there went forward what 
cannot possibly be described in human words, 
because Law was long before Speech and every 
word, as " chaos," " confusion," "formless- 
ness," "darkness," every human word has 
reference to law. We can only approach the 
idea by pulling pin after pin out of the splen- 
did tabernacle of the universe and letting it fall 
in ruinous decay. But "fall" and "'ruinous" 
and "decay" have reference to law. The vast 
oppositeness of the original to the present state 
of affairs is begun to be perceived by noticing 
how all our thoughts and expressions go on in 
obedience to law. On chaos law fell and 
through chaos law thrilled, the first symptom 
of life. Creation was born in the evening. 
The first swing of the pendulum of the clock of 
Time marked the first instant of the evening. 
" The Evening and the Morning were the first 
Day." 

The Bible follows nature on this same type. 
Its Day begins in the darkness of the original 
state of the universe, and emerges in the Cos- 
mos of an orderly physical, intellectual, and 
moral world. It begins in the evening of the 
history of humanity, its dim infancy and failing 
youth, and emerges in the glory of the redeemed 
spirit. It begins with man groping through the 
by-ways of earth, and ends with man walking 
in the open, golden streets of the New Jerusalem. 
It begins with the evening of Adam, and ends 
with the morning of Jesus. 

The same law holds good in the history of each 
individual man. His earliest beginnings in em- 
bryo are in darkness and the peril thereof. How 
long that evening seems when we attentively 
regard it ! Months and no senses ; then senses 
and months before any child can use them. In- 
tellect lies like a landscape in the night. Then 



54 



JVight and Morning. 



the dawnings of intelligence show mind more 
and more. Sometimes no morning comes, and 
then all the human life is an evening, but there 
is no complete day. 

The same holds true in each department of 
human exertion. Men usually begin life poor. 
It is exceptional when men's childhood and 
youth are their happiest time. The struggle for 
existence goes forward. The skill to win the 
bread has to be first acquired, and then exerted, 
before the joy of the bread comes. It is quite 
unnatural when the morning precedes the even- 
ing, and men have every luxury and brightness 
in youth, and every privation and gloom in old 
age. The earliest years are the darkest. Let 
me say that, for the comfort of the many young 
men who attend on my ministry. My sons, 
it is night with you now, and a night in which 
you have oft weeping. It is so hard. You have 
so few returns for your many efforts. You see 
older men accumulating rapidly. You say 
Capital can do anything : if I only had capital ! 
Very true. But capital is gold in a mine. It 
has to be dug out in the dark. You are in the 
dark digging now, and weeping while you dig. 
But if you are forming habits of observation, 
caution, enterprise, honor, and thrift, weep on 
awhile. Weeping may endure for your night of 
toil, but joy will come in the morning of your 
success. But if you try to make a morning in 
your night by prodigal expenditures of money, 
by undue and expensive gayeties, by wine and 
women and horses, by striving to live like your 
employer who has been thirty years in trade, you 
will be acting unnaturally, you will be living in 
an unreal day in which there is no real joy, and 
you will fall on a sudden night in which weeping 
will go forward without being cheered by the 
hope of morning. 

The same law is illustrated in student life. If 
one will become learned one must separate one's 
self from many an indulgence, from many an 
innocent pleasure, and many an hour of ease. 
' • Much study is wearisome to the flesh," is just 
as true in our day as it was in the day of Solo- 
mon. The student works forward without the 
stimulus of applause. His sedentary life de- 
presses him. He is away from sunlight and 
fresh air. He is away from concerts and places 
of amusement, and parties of pleasure, and 
the manifold diversions of gay social life. He 
is digging among hidden things. He is 
climbing acclivous heights of thoughts. He is 
training his mental muscles under rigid gymnas- 
tic rules. He mus hold himself to his work, 
although the songs of birds and thf brilliant 



sunlight are so enticing out-doors. He hears 
the sound of the fame of the great scholars, 
orators, and poets. He is so obscure ! He is 
doing nothing for the world, not even making 
his own salt. For his bread perhaps he is de- 
pendent on the advances made by some lover of 
learning and patron of genius. Weeping en- 
dures through all his night of toilful study, but 
joy will come. The hour will arrive when that 
learning so painfully acquired and that severe 
discipline of intellectual powers shall lift him up 
amongst men, and in song or oration or dis- 
covery or book he shall shake the nations with 
a joy like daybreak. While he weeps in his 
night the laurel is growing, the laurel that is to 
be wrought into wreaths for his brow. 

Trace back the history of the great inventors 
and mechanics, the men who construct bridges 
with marvellous spans, link together roads that 
girdle a continent, make electric cables like 
spinal chords collecting and diffusing the nerve- 
power of intelligence, and rear cathedrals so 
lofty and so grand as to draw men up toward 
the throne of God and angels down toward the 
altar of Jesus, and consider how these men wept 
through a long night of poverty, neglect, and 
struggle, before success rose like the day-star, 
and wealth and fame poured in like the enlarg- 
ing day. With them the evening came before 
the morning. In all life every day consists not 
of morning and evening but of evening and 
morning. 

Moreover, dear brethren, there is this lesson, 
that weeping co??tes of ignorance. We are in the 
night. Darkness is on us ; but God is in the 
light. What He is doing and what He is going 
to do, we know not. What are you? What 
am I ? 

" An infant crying in the night, 
An infant crying for the light, 
And with no language but a cry." 

The morning will come. We shall see that what 
frightened us in the night was the noise of the 
workmen building for us a palace of delights, 
the sough of the bellows at the furnace where 
they were purifying the gold for the crown of 
our everlasting rejoicing. Many things grieve 
us now that would make us happy if it were day, 
and will make us when the day shall come. 

We shall lose much if we fail to perceive an- 
other teaching of the text, a most consoling les- 
son ; it is, that weeping is brief and joy is long. 
In the original, the word translated " endure," 
means " lodge," as a sojourner at an inn, and the 
word translated "joy," means " singing aloud," 
or " shouting." Weeping is not the proprietor 



JVijght and 



of the house, nor even a permanent occupant. 
Joy is the rightful tenant. The soul was made 
for happiness and not for misery, even as "God 
has not appointed us unto wrath but to obtain 
salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ." It is 
not a necessity of our being, as it is of the orbs 
in the solar system, that a part should be toward 
the sun and part turned away into darkness. 

Perhaps, beloved brethren, the largest appli- 
cation of this figure and its embedded truth is to 
the relation which exists between this present 
life and the immortal estate of the children of 
the kingdom of heaven. Suppose all life should 
be a night of unbroken labor and study and care 
to the student, the merchant, the farmer, the 
mechanic, the seamstress, the sufferer, — a dark- 
ness as to material success or physical pleas- 
ure. The student never reaches fame, nor the 
merchant fortune, nor the farmer success, nor 
the mechanic distinction, nor the seamstress 
rest, nor the sufferer ease, — but to each the 
night darkens down into deeper darkness, — and 
each dies a failure in the eyes of his fellow-men. 
But through it all there may be the day of the 
Lord, because the soul is turned to its sun, the 
source of its light and warmth and power. I 
have seen many a man whose body-side was in 
the night while his soul-side was in the morn- 
ing. The happiest man I have met this week 
is a man who had lost a million of dollars, but 
who while that pecuniary shadow was falling 
upon him had turned his soul-side to Jesus and 
found surpassing riches in Him. And to such 
a one, how short must life seem when com- 
pleted ! How like a watch in the night ! How 
like a tale that has been told ! How quickly we 
forget sorrows when joys come dancing in ! 
So, all the night of life may be filled with weep- 
ing, but the morning of the better life will 
be filled with shouting. "In the morning 
shouting." Such is the Psalmist's brief and 
brilliant description. Morning ! Morning falls 
on the tomb. Morning wakes the eyes of 
the soul that had shut themselves for a season 
in sympathy with the poor body in the hour of 
dying. Morning rewakes all its powers and 
aspirations. That morning, dear brethren, 
may come to you and to me as now sometimes 
a morning comes to one who has been in pain 
until the senses have become benumbed, and 
then had fallen asleep and now wakes in perfect 
ease. We may fall asleep in garret or cellar or 
mansion, lost in a forest or afloat on a wreck. 
The shadows had gathered, the stars had 
become beclouded, the rain was falling, the 
winds were blowing aloof, night and clouds and 



Morning. 55 



weeping, fainting, senselessness — and then, 
morning . We shall wake in light and 
warmth and health. We shall see the skies of 
eternity, we shall breathe the airs of Paradise, 
we shall feel the vigor of immortality, we shall 
hear the voices of heaven, — sweet voices, musi- 
cal, not too transporting, nor yet the sound as 
of many waters, but voices attuned to our con- 
dition, mingling old familiar words and tunes 
with tones and cadences that could come only 
from hearts sweet with heaven and through 
throats and mouths that had long breathed the 
air of heaven. Perhaps they may make us 
happy with a song of assurance which once 
drew tears from our eyes as a song of hope : 

" Here is rest for the weary, here is rest for the weary, 
Here is rest for you. 
On this morning side of Jordan, 
In these sweet fields of Eden, 
Where the tree of Life is blooming, 
Here is rest for you." 

Can we refrain ? Shall we not join them ? 
Shall we not go with them ? Shall we not 
quickly learn to sing the Song of Moses 
and the Lamb, the song of everlasting law 
and everlasting love? Shall we not see and 
hear and join " the great voice of much people 
in heaven, saying Alleluia: Salvation and glory 
and honor and power unto the Lord our God ?" 
It is morning ! Hark ! "The voice of a great 
multitude as the voice of many waters and as 
the voice of mighty thunderings, saying Alle- 
luia ; for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth." 
We join that throng, we join that song. Where 
is Weeping now ? Fled with the Night. He 
has wiped all tears from all eyes. O softest 
hand of everlasting love. O eyes forever bright- 
ened by the benediction of the touch of the 
Lord. O Morning, cloudless, tearless, brilli- 
ant, balmy, and everlasting ! O men, O broth- 
ers, bear the weeping. The night is short. 
The s morning comes. In the night weeping is 
a lodger, in the morning joy is an everlasting 
mate. 

" Brief life is here our portion, 

Brief sorrow, short-lived care ; 
The life that knows no ending, 

The tearless life, is there. 
And now we fight the battle, 

But then shall wear the crown 
Of full and everlasting 
And passionless renown." 

Break, O Morning, break on the souls that 
are in the night of sin ; and on our graves, 
break, Morning of the everlasting Day ! 



IX. 

§a ft a#m f Willis. 

"BECAUSE there was no room for them in THE INN." — LUKE II. 7. 



My dear brethren, there is a simple fact, most 
simply stated, in the second chapter of the Gos- 
pel according to St. Luke, in the seventh verse, 
which seems very touching and instructive. It 
is this : 

" There was no room for them in the inn !" 

For them / Who were they ? Mary and 
Jesus ! And this statement in regard to the 
mother and the child is assigned as the reason 
why He was born in a stable and was laid by His 
mother in a manger, because there was no room 
for them in the tavern. 

With our culture and our knowledge of Mary 
and Jesus, this statement seems a record of 
brutality. That an honest, decent woman, travel- 
ling on business which imperial decrees made 
absolutely necessary, should be turned out into 
a stable to give birth to her first-born, strikes us 
as really horrible. We instinctively ask, why 
did not the men vacate their rooms ? Why did 
not several of them sit up all night, if need were, 
so that this simple-hearted and manifestly saintly 
young Jewess might have the slight amelioration 
of respectable surroundings to her first maternal 
agony? You and I would have given her our 
apartments and taken the stable, rather than 
subject her to such discomfort. There was not 
a gentleman in Christendom last night who, 
under the circumstances, would not have vacated 
his chamber, even in as cold a New York night 
as we were having. 

But you must recollect that the occurrence in 
the text took place before Jesus was born. To 
that very Mary and that very Jesus we owe our 
tender regard for womanhood and childhood. 
The very persons against whom the doors of the 
humble inn of a small village in a conquered 
province were closed, have opened millions of 
hearts to humanity by clothing suffering with 
the garments of sanctity. The holy child Jesus 
has imparted an air of holiness to all infancy, 
and the Virgin Mother has consecrated mater- 
nity forever. 

When we forget all this and picture to our- 
selves the ever-blessed Virgin Mary stooping in 
agony before an inn-keeper, and begging for 
any humblest room he could give her, that she 



might bring forth her first-born, it seems an in- 
tolerable idea to us that she and Joseph should 
have been turned from the house, and that she 
should have been led to a stable to fall down in 
the straw among the cattle. 

We know these rejected guests, this Mary and 
this Jesus, the one as the purest of women, the 
other a- the holiest of children, both as having 
inspired all that is most splendid and successful 
in modern painting and poetry, and, as Mother 
and Child, the representatives of all that is love- 
liest in* humanity and of all that is most glorious 
in divinity, the horizon of human vision on whose 
edge heaven and earth meet, — Love and Power 
and Purity ! And for these there was no room 
in the inn at Bethlehem ! 

Before you utterly damn this unnamed Jewish 
inn-keeper and his seemingly unfeeling guests, 
pray be reasonable, and consider three things in 
abatement : 

1. That you bring to the judgment a culture 
in the humanities which you owe entirely to this 
Jesus, who had not yet been born ; and 

2. That the inn-keeper had reasons for his 
conduct quite as valid as those which are per- 
petually allowed among men; and 

3. That toward this very same Jesus you and 
I have behaved much worse than did these peo- 
ple whom we are so forward to denounce. 

I. As to the first : Men are generally guilty 
of holding their fellows to account for a measure 
of light and culture which those fellow-men do 
not possess, but which their judges do. We 
must in common justice recollect that the prin- 
ciples taught by that child of Mary have been 
regenerating and reforming the world for eight- 
een centuries, and that they have made the dif- 
ference between our civilization and that of the 
Bethlehem tavern-keeper. Honor to women, 
regard for children, pity for physical suffering, 
a high estimate of human life, and all those deli- 
cate sentiments of sensitive honor which we call 
chivalry, sentiments the cherishing of which 
makes gentlemen and the despising of which 
makes blackguards, all these have been set forth 
and inculcated by the words and example of 
Jesus as they never were before. We shall be 



No Room 



held to account for our improvement of the in- 
fluence of Jesus, but the inn-keeper cannot be, 
for this light which was to enlighten the Gen- 
tiles had not yet risen on the nations. 

It is among the rules of judgment in the court 
of God to hold a man responsible not for what 
he has not, but for what he has. We are very 
frequently foolish enough to reverse this plain 
elementary formula of justice, not only as to this 
inn-keeper, but also as to other men who lived 
before Jesus, or who having lived since have 
passed their lives outside the benign influence 
of His holy teachings. 

II. But as to the second : Let us see what 
reasons probably influenced the inn-keeper, and 
whether the mass of mankind would not think 
those reasons quite valid. 

1. He turned them off because they were not 
known. 

Go back to the spot. It is a busy time. 
Guests are coming. The imperial edict for the 
enrollment of the provinces is bringing multi- 
tudes from the country to town. At this junc- 
ture two people present themselves. One is a 
young woman. Her condition betrays itself. 
Who are they ? The inn-keeper does not know 
them. If they have come from the neighboring 
rural districts, why did they not remain at home 
at such a crisis? He does not know how far 
away their home is, nor what imperious business 
has brought them to Bethlehem, nor how inno- 
cent and ignorant this poor young woman is. 
A strolling couple, one being in a suspicious 
condition, desire to enter the house at the time 
of a great crowd — and the man is in such cir- 
cumstances that he cannot explain the condition 
of his female companion. Now, under the cir- 
cumstances, would not such a reception as they 
received in Bethlehem be awarded them at a 
majority of houses in Christendom on this blessed 
day ? 

2. Their appearance and the condition of 
their luggage were against them. 

To this day you know that men judge by ap- 
pearances, and keepers of taverns, even if so 
stylish as our St. Nicholas and Fifth Avenue, 
never claimed to be more than men. You 
know what is meant by a " carpet-bag," on one 
hand, and on the other by a " Saratoga trunk," 
and what a bid for attention a man makes by 
his luggage. It has always been so. Little did 
Joseph and Mary have. They had not expected 
the event to be so soon. She had brought no 
elegant bed-linen and fine clothes for the little 
stranger, if he should arrive. She wrapt him 
in swaddling clothes, rent clothes, rags, poor 



for Jesus. 57 



babe, when he was born. So mean and poor 
must the appearance of Joseph and Mary have 
been, that the honest inn-keeper, having regard 
for the feelings of self-respect which his guests 
cherished, would not introduce into the crowd a 
rustic woman about to be a mother. He had 
his regular customers. They were substantial 
citizens from the neighboring country. They 
were staid, respectable, conservative heads of 
families. They never would endure to see the 
plain countryman Joseph brought in with his 
suspicious female fellow-traveller, as they must 
all regard her. To bring in two strangers for a 
night might be to drive off a dozen good re- 
sponsible customers forever. Would not such a 
course of conduct be pronounced imprudent by 
the majority of business men in America, if 
considered apart from all that 7iow hallows the 
names of Mary and Jesus ? For you must 
mark that the real glory of Mary and Jesus was 
unknown to this tavern-keeper, and was really 
unsuspected. 

3. They were poor and could not pay. 

It would have greatly increased the bill of a 
rich couple who should have demanded the 
turning of a guest from his apartments to make 
way for themselves in an emergency. Joseph 
and Mary had most probably not come pre- 
pared to do more than meet the mere expenses 
of a usual and economic journey. They could 
not incur responsibilities. They had little 
money and no credit. They had fallen so low 
that they stood at the door of a tavern, two de- 
scendants of the most honored and triumphant 
of Hebrew kings, and, because these people of 
royal blood could not buy out the place of some 
guest for the night, the greatest descendant of 
David, the Child who was to surpass infinitely 
the glory of his magnificent ancestor, was com- 
pelled to find his birthplace in a stable, his first 
bed in a manger, and his first companions among 
the lowly brutes that give patient service to man. 
And yet the inn-keeper did but take a plain com- 
mercial view of the case. Would it "pay" to 
take these people in ? Most obviously neither 
immediately nor prospectively would it " pay," 
so far as the tavern-keeper could at all perceive. 

III. Now in the third case, after you have 
considered the difference made in our culture by 
the blessed Jesus, and all the reasons which the 
inn-keeper had for driving Mary into the stable 
because he had no room for her and Jesus in the 
inn, before you pronounce sentence, make some 
little examination into the question whether we 
have not treated Jesus worse than he was treated 
in Bethlehem. The decision of that question 



58 



No Room for Jesus. 



will obviously much depend upon the space in 
our hearts and lives which Jesus is allowed by 
us to occupy. Are there not some of us who 
never permit Him to come upon our premises ? 
He may be totally shut off from the life of a man, 
as far as man can exclude Him. So present is 
He everywhere among men by the power of His 
principles and His Spirit, that it is not possible 
to exclude Him utterly, and yet, so far as our 
responsibilitiy is concerned, we do keep Him 
out to the whole extent of our failure to give Him 
a welcome to our thoughts, to our affections, and 
to our activities. Does He have ample welcome 
to all these departments of our existence ? Does 
He have the chief place in our thoughts — the 
best place in our love — the largest place in our 
work? Is He welcomed and honored? What 
do you say, my dear friends ? How stands the 
case with you and your Lord ? It is the last 
Sunday in the year. Is He still standing at the 
door and knocking ? Does He wish to be "formed 
within you, the hope of glory," and are ye still 
declining to enjoy the honor of having a Nativity 
of Jesus in your hearts ? -If so you are pursuing 
the course of the inn-keeper of Bethlehem, for 
what, perhaps, you consider the same reasons, 
but which I hope you will see are not at all 
valid or excusatory in your case, whether they 
were in his or not. 
Let us review them. 

I. Jesus is kept out of your heart because you 
do not know Him. But you ought to know 
Him. Your ignorance is willful. Recollect 
that he does not come unborn to you, as He did 
to the inn-keeper in Bethlehem. He comes to 
you with all His history of growth and beauty, 
of truth and activity, of self-denial and suffering, 
of love and power. Since the night His mother 
was sent back into a stable, He has performed 
miracles, opened the eyes of the blind, unstop- 
ped the ears of the deaf, cleansed the skin of 
the leper, and made hearts, that were still under 
the ribs of death, begin again the dance of life 
to the music of His pulsating accents. He has 
walked the earth in the sight of men and in 
view of angels, and shown how sweet and strong 
and grand and good a thing a man may be. He 
has let light in on life, so that life may no longer 
be gloomy, and on immortality, so that endless 
existence may be no longer dreadful. He has 
spoken words that are known and pondered by 
more minds than any other utterances the world 
h is ever heard. He has lifted the whole plane 
of humanity to a loftier level. He has borne the 
most sublime martyrdom to truth. He has sur- 
vived death. He has lived growingly in the 



hearts of successive generations of men. He 
has changed and purified and elevated civiliza- 
tion. He has erected Hospitals and Asylums 
and Refuges without number. He has been the 
world's very greatest comfort and very greatest 
glory. You know Him in all these particulars. 
He comes to you to-day bearing in His hands 
the credentials of eighteen centuries to His 
divine power to change and save, proofs beyond 
number of His holy gentleness and lovingness, 
and desire to save and elevate you. 

You not know Him ! Then there is nothing 
else worth knowing ! 

Yes, you do know Him: and knowing, you 
keep Him from your heart and thought and life. 
The inn-keeper of Bethlehem will rise up in the 
judgment with .many men of my congregation 
and condemn them, — because he turned away an 
unaccredited woman, and you reject the ac- 
knowledged Lord of glory. I beseech you do 
not meet that tavern-keeper at the judgment- 
seat. He will cry in your ears, "I shall never 
forget that I turned away Mary the Mother of 
the Lord. But I did it ignorantly. You, — you 
have rejected Him, and you knew it was He. O 
that I could have known the character of my 
guest, as you knew that of yours ; then would 
my life have been made radiant by the fact that 
Jesus was born in my house !" Such reproaches 
will be your just due. You are this day knew- 
ingly turning Jesus away from your door. 

2. And you have the inn-keeper's second rea- 
son : it will drive other guests away. It was not 
certain in his case and it is only probable in 
yours. Perhaps it would turn other guests out 
of your heart, perhaps not. If any depart be- 
cause Jesus came, you ought to be glad of their 
departure, for the presence of Jesus is incom- 
patible with nothing whose company you should 
love. 

Now, is your heart so full that there is no 
room for Jesus ? No room ? Full of — what ? 
Let us look. 

Here is a whole room full of the members of 
the large family of the Pleasures. They are 
many, and they are exacting. They take large 
space, for they live widely. Many of them are 
most deceptive, having stolen the garb and imi- 
tated the manners of the more reputable and 
solid Enjoyments. These latter are the most 
pleasant and among the most respectable guests 
that the heart can entertain. They will stay 
with Jesus, while those wild and giddy and pro- 
fitless things vou call Pleasures would better 
have no place in your affections. You were not 
born to be amused, but to be disciplined, But 



No Room for Jesus. 



59 



you have accustomed yourself to think that 
everything must come to you in the shape of 
the pleasant and agreeable. Your medicine 
must be cordials, your food dainties, your bed 
down, your very worship an entertainment, 
so that you will praise only that preaching that 
amuses you, or worship only in the church 
which is a perplexing cross between a temple 
and an opera-house. That is the good your 
Pleasures have done for you — stuffed you so full 
of sweetmeats and licorice relishes, that you 
have no good wholesome taste for wholesome 
good things. Shame on you ! Turn them out, 
and let the' Man of the Cross bring His pierced 
hands and feet and forehead into your hearts, and 
make ,your lives grand in that they house the 
sublime Master of Humanity. 

And there is Business, taking up almost all 
your heart and head, and crowding you and 
calling you and bothering you, until you are so 
nervous that you can hardly eat or sleep. No 
room for Jesus and His cross and His blessed 
Work. Reflect how often during the past year 
you have worked so hard through the whole 
week as to be wholly unable to rise on Sunday 
in time to attend Church-service. Recollect, if 
you can, how often you have carried the Satur- 
day night's work not simply to the edge of the 
Holy Day, but even over into the sacred hours. 
What did all this say ? And what said the 
many times in which you have hurried from 
your homes too soon to have prayer with your 
family, or have come back too late to conduct 
the domestic worship which should close each 
day? They distinctly said, " No room in this 
inn for you, Jesus /" Room for Mammon, 
and room for Pleasure, but no room for the 
blessed Saviour ! 

Oh, my brethren, if you would let Him in, 
He would turn every foul visitant out, and as 
one of the painters has represented the manger 
and the stable made glorious in every part by 
light streaming from the figure of the Infant 
Saviour, so would Jesus irradiate and beautify 
your whole life. Room for darkness, and no 
room for light ; room for foulness, and no room 
for purity ; room for death, but no room for 
life ! Every story from attic to basement 
crowded, and Jesus turned out into the stable ! 
Why, you are daily repeating in most aggra- 
vating forms the slight put upon Jesus by the 
condemned inn-keeper of Bethlehem ! 

3. But the inn-keeper sent Mary to the stable 
because it would not pay to entertain her in his 
house. He would have been compelled to turn 
o-Jtsome well-known and liberally-paying guests. 



But you have not his ignorance to plead. 
You know who it is that asks for a place in your 
heart. You know Him to be a Prince, for 
whose sake every reasonable man would think it 
quite the proper thing to dismiss any other guest. 
You know . that He never took lodgings as a 
gratuity, that He never touched anything that 
was not blessed ; that He never received a look 
of kindness, a word of love, nay, even a cup of 
cold water, without leaving behind Him a 
reward worth a hundred-fold more than what 
He received, and growing in value with the 
lapsing hours of life. 

Does not "pay" to entertain Jesus ! Did you 
ever know a man who took Jesus into his intel- 
lect, and worked up his studies under that Great 
Master, and not grow in profoundness of thought 
and width of range of intellectual vision ? Did 
you ever know an artist give Jesus a lodging, and 
not thereby have all his aesthetic nature quick- 
ened and purified and brightened ? Did you 
ever know any man to conduct any business for 
Jesus, permeating his life with the spirit of Jesus, 
basing his plans on the principles taught by 
Jesus, and laying every profitable income of his 
trade as a tribute at the feet of Jesus, who did 
not thrive and increase and have happiness 
along the whole line of his business career ? 

O, my beloved, it is the Christmas-tide, it is 
the last Sunday of the year. Jesus begs en- 
trance. He does not come in the person of his 
bowed and pain-stricken mother. He comes 
from the Cross and from the Sepulchre, from 
supreme pain and lowest humiliation. From 
that tomb which He burst He ascended to 
heaven, leading captivity captive. He gave 
gifts to men. And thence He comes marching 
down the centuries. He has fed the hungry, 
He has healed the sick, He has released the 
prisoners, He has enlightened the blind, He has 
cheered the disconsolate, He has fathered the 
orphans, He has supported the martyrs, He has 
strengthened the confessors, He has lifted up 
the lowly, He has forgiven the sinners, He has 
raised the dead, He has brightened the grave, 
He has killed Death, and He has conquered 
Hell. He comes ! His footsteps make the 
stairs of the ages down which He treads to glow 
goldenly. All the graces of heaven and earth 
attend Him. In His right hand is the chalice 
of immortality, and in His left the crown of 
everlasting glory. His looks shoot light into 
the intellect and love into the heart. See ! He 
comes to your heart, with all these blessings 
which He wishes to give to you. He says, " Let 
me enter." Will you refuse Hi?n, your best 



GO 



The Nativity Hymn. 



friend, and give lodging to your foes? The 
dews of the night, nay, the frost of the 
winter is now on His locks, for He stood at your 
heart last Sunday when His word was preached, 
and last Friday, the day of the week which re- 
minds us of His death on the cross, and He cried, 
"Let me in; oh, let me in !" And you would 
not. You barred your doors and sat down with 
gayer guests, and kept your Saviour out. Yester- 
day and last night He knocked— and cried— and 
you said, " No room ! no room !" 

Is He going away ? It is the last Sunday of 
the year. Has He grown weary of your insult- 
ing dismissals ? Stop ! Lord Jesus Christ ! Oh, 
Son of Mary, stop ! Do not leave such of my 
people as have said to Thee, £ 'No room /" It must 



not be. I seem to hear these busy men in fu- 
ture knocking passionately and desperately at the 
gate of mercy, and out of the solemn profound- 
ness of eternity there comes the crushing echo, 
" No room !" And conscience shrieks to them, 
" No room ! No room among the crowns and 
songs and glories of heaven for the hearts that 
had no room for Jesus !" Stay, Lord Jesus, 
stay, and knock and call and plead until these 
people shall be touched by the tender accents of 
Thy voice, and fly to the entrance of their hearts 
and pull every bolt away and fling every door 
up and fall at Thy feet and cry, " Go never 
more from me, O Jesus ; but stay, stay with me 
forever, for all the room in my heart is Thine 
own, — to have and to hold forever." 



X. 

"THEN SAMUEL TOOK A STONE, AND SET IT BETWEEN MIZPEH AND SHEN, AttD CAlJLEb THE 
NAME OF IT EBEN-EZER, SAYING, HITHERTO HATH THE LORD HELPED US." — I SAMUEL, VII. 12. 



Twenty years before the event recorded in this 
text the Israelites had suffered a great defeat at 
the hands of the Philistines, over whom they now 
have obtained a great victory. To connect the 
two lessons of these two events, Samuel, the 
prophet, set up a memorial stone, calling it 
Eben-ezer, the stone of help. Into the first battle 
the Israelites had entered with great dependence 
upon the ark. They sent and brought the ark 
from Shiloh, devoted " churchmen" as they 
were. But the ark did not save them. The 
Lord will not give His glory to another, not even 
to that which represents His presence and His 
fidelity. In this latter case they fell to prayer, 
for the Philistines were upon them again. They 
had the good sense and piety to repent of their 
former blunder. They were victorious. 

Samuel said, when he erected his Eben-Ezer 
monument, ''Hitherto hath the Lord helped 
us." There was a sense in which the very defeat 
to which the Lord had left them in the first in- 
stance was a help to them. It showed them 
the folly of depending upon the mere externals 
of religion and the necessity of serving the Lord 
faithfully in spirit and in truth. The prophet 
desired to keep before the eyes of the people a 
visible reminder of the defeat and the victory 
and the lessons which they taught. He said 
also, "Hitherto." The word looks backward and 
forward. Retrospective, it is a gratitude ; pro- 
spective, it is a caution. Will He help us al- 
ways ? How shall we keep that mighty help ? 
What will drive it from us ? 

In closing the third and opening the fourth 
year of our history as a church, dearly beloved 
brethren, this text has occurred to me as a motto 
suggestive of lessons which we may use profit- 
ably, while we make some review of our history 
and take some observations for the proper direc- 
tion of our future course. 

The Church of the Strangers is a child of 
divine Providence, if any human institution can 
be so called: because, it came, without purpose 
or plan on the part of any man ; it has con- 
tinued, when all the calculations of human 
probabilities were against it ; and it grows, 
strengthening by what seems to be its defeats. 



As I have never published any history of the 
church, and as this sermon is to be reported, it 
may be well to set up an Eben-ezer this morn- 
ing in a grateful review of our past history. 

I have said that our Church originated without 
purpose that it should be a Church and without 
plan for its continuance. If any man's sagacity 
had devised it, it is most likely I should know 
it ; indeed, it is most likely that I should have 
been that man. But I declare to you that if 
any man's sagacity contrived and started the 
movement I have never detected it, and for my 
own part, at the first, I was as innocent of any 
expectation of a new church coming into exist- 
ence as any youngest child. 

God does not compel men. Every man is 
free to act. But God is free also. And He uses 
all the performances and failures of men as facts 
wherewith to put His grand motions forward 
through the universe. I was in New York tem- 
porarily for another purpose, and was induced to 
preach a few times in the small chapel of the 
University, which I hired and occupied to quit 
myself of a promise extorted from me by the 
urgency of a lady who had heard me preach in 
Jersey City. The first sermon was on the 22d 
day of July, 1866, and was heard by sixteen 
people, including the preacher and the other 
five members of his family. As my premise 
did not hold me over a month, on the third 
Sunday I announced to the congregation, which 
had largely increased, that the fourth Sunday 
would terminate my course of sermons. It was 
then proposed that a collection be taken daily, 
and that I be requested to continue to preach 
every Sunday morning. Having other business 
that engaged me closely during the week, so 
that there was no time nor strength for pastoral 
work, it was nevertheless agreeable to me to 
preach the word of God once on Sunday. To 
this I consented. It bound me to nothing and 
pledged no one else. There was no covenant 
and no salary. I might leave when I would. 

But the congregation had grown until the 
little chapel was packed. They were mostly 
strangers, as I was. They resolved one day to 
form an Executive Committee of gentlemen of 



62 



Eben-Ezer—An Anniversary Sermon. 



different denominations, and keep the place open 
for worship. They called it "The Strangers' 
Sunday Home." The Committee consisted of 
Charles L. Nelson, R. C. Gardner, B. B. Lewis, 
S. T. Taylor, Dr. Seat, J. M. Roberts, F. M. 
Garrett, R. C. Daniel, and J. L. Gaines. A 
Sunday-School was formed, of which Mr. R. C. 
Daniel was the Superintendent. 

There was no other clergyman of my own 
church in New York, and these Christian people 
were of several denominations ; but it seemed a 
most pleasant thing for us to meet and worship 
our Heavenly Father, and it made some beauti- 
ful Christian friendships- It began to interest 
young men, who were in the city as clerks. I 
soon found a little pastoral charge gathering 
about me. My heart began to cleave to this 
people, and theirs, I think, to me. 

The new year came. Before it there had 
come an invitation to the presidency of a college. 
But my little flock begged that I would stay. 
They could not support me. The enterprise in 
which I had been engaged during the regular 
days of the week had come to an end. There 
was no design ahead, no plan, no life-work sug- 
gested. It was merely preaching the gospel, 
without ecclesiasticism. It might end at any 
time. But if they desired it, and the authorities 
of my own church, knowing the demands upon 
me and the college invitation, should advise it, 
I would agree to take the risk another year, not 
knowing what the Lord would do. The Bishops 
of my own church did advise me to remain ; 
and so the work continued. 

Our quarters were straitened. It was dif- 
ficult to preach without treading on some one, 
they so crowded the platform. My gifted and 
beloved friend, Rev. Dr. Francis L. Hawks, had 
been occupying the Large Chapel of the Univer- 
sity. That great and good man had taken a 
deep interest in my movements. He died in 
great peace on the 26th of September, 1866. In 
his last hours he sent for me, and with his dying 
breath he exhorted me with most impressive 
earnestness to cling to the work of preaching 
Jesus, and to shut my ears to any appeals that 
might be made to my ambition. He knew what 
offers I was rejecting and what sacrifices of com- 
fort my family, as well as myself, were makin g 
to keep open this free " Sunday Home." 

He died. His congregation were building a 
new church for him when he was called from 
his labors. They were able to vacate the Large 
Chapel of the University on the last of April. 
Negotiations were made by my friends, through 
Dr. Gardner, assisted by Mr. Theodore Bartow of 



Dr. Hawks' church, for the occupancy of the 
Large Chapel. We entered on the first Sunday in 
May, 1867. We had increased our accommoda- 
tions fourfold, but were still a mere assemblage, 
without church organization. 

In the autumn of that year many persons, ex- 
pecting to remain in the city, some a longer, 
some a shorter time, some perhaps permanently, 
offered me their " church-letters." But we had 
no church. Much thought and prayer were 
given to the subject. Consultation was had 
with the authorities of the church of which I 
am a minister, and with other godly and learned 
persons. The result was a determination to 
organize in this city a free and independent 
Church of Jesus Christ. 

On the last two Sundays in December, 1867, 
it was publicly announced that on the first Sun- 
day in January, 1868, such a Church would be 
organized ; that there would be admitted into 
it (1) Such as present letters showing their good 
standing in any branch of Christ's visible Church ; 
(2) Such as declare that they have so been and 
desire so now to be, but, by reason of circum- 
stances which they could not control, are not 
able to present letters of membership ; (3) Such 
as desire to join upon their sincere and hearty 
profession of faith in that statement of Christian 
Doctrines commonly known as The Apostles' 
Creed, and on profession of an earnest " desire 
to flee from the wrath to come and to be saved 
from their sins." Accordingly on the first Sun- 
day, being the 5th day of January, 1868, thirty- 
two persons enrolled themselves, thus forming 
the Church of the Strangers in the city 
of New York: whereupon the Sacrament of the 
Lord's Supper was administered. 

During the remainder of that year thirty other 
persons became members. During the year 
1869 fifty other persons became members, and 
during the year 1870 sixty-five others; making 
in all one hundred and seventy-seven. We have 
had thirty-six communion seasons, and never 
one without some addition to our membership. 
Of these, forty-nine have entered on Profession 
of Faith, and the others have come, from Con- 
gregational, Baptist, the Church of England, 
Dutch Reformed, Independent, Lutheran, 
Methodist Episcopal, Presbyterian, Protestant 
Episcopal, Southern Methodist Episcopal, and 
Wesleyan, Churches. The Apostles' Creed was 
incorporated into our ritual because it was 
believed that all people who call and profess 
themselves Christians, whether they be Greek, 
or Latin, or Protestant, do agree on that symbol 
of faith, whatever may be the differences in 



Eben-Ezer—An Anniversary Sermon, 



63 



their modes of seeing or stating their several 
theological dogmas ; and we were happy to find 
so venerable a nucleus of Christian unity pre- 
served in all the Churches through so many 
centuries. 

The business of the Church was conducted 
by a Board of Finance until the 27th of Septem- 
ber, 1869, when it was resolved to have a regular 
Monthly Meeting of all the communicants and 
subscribers, who should have charge of all the 
affairs, the first Monthly Meeting being held 
that day. At an adjourned meeting on the nth 
of October a Board of Trustees was elected, to 
hold what little property there was, to wit, a 
few carpets and an organ that was mortgaged. 
At the same meeting it was ordered that an 
Advisory Council of seven should be elected 
annually, whose business it should be to advise 
the Pastor, and "a majority of whose votes 
should be necessary for the expulsion of a 
member." We have had regular Monthly 
Meetings ever since, with increasing unity, 
brotherly love, and prosperity. The Advisory 
Council have been called to administer discipline 
in only two cases. 

Still there were great drawbacks to our work. 
We were up three flights of stairs, in a hired 
chapel from which we might be ejected at the 
close of the year. We were afloat. Men do not 
like to make attachment to an unsettled enter- 
prise. We had no committee-room, no Sun- 
day-School-room. no place for social prayer, 
without heating up that large chapel- While 
devoting myself to the pastoral work of a parish 
circle twelve miles in diameter, many weary 
hours were spent in asking whereunto all this 
would lead, and whether it would not end in a 
failure. God only knows the heart throbs that 
would have been spared, but which doubtless 
were necessary for discipline, if we could have 
foreseen what was in store for us. 

Last year a series of circumstances occurred, 
familiar to most of you and not of interest to 
strangers, by which our brethren who owned 
this church in which we are now worshipping 
were at liberty to sell it ; and the love they bore 
our work, and the sagacity which led them to 
see that it was the very place for such work, 
inclined them to offer it to us below what they 
considered its full market value. We consented 
to take it : and the Lord helped us through 
Cornelius Vanderbilt, Esq., who paid the whole 
amount of the price, doing this without solicita- 
tion, of his own motion, out of approval of our 
work, and incited thereunto, as we believe, by 
the Spirit of Almighty God. 



We reopened this church on the first Sun- 
day in October, 1870, the exercises continuing 
through that day and the following Sunday, and 
on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday evenings of 
the intervening week. The Sunday-School had 
taken possession of its department of the build- 
ing on Sunday, the 28th of August, under the 
superintendency of Mr. William J. Woodward. 
Eben-EZER ! Hitherto hath the Lord helped us / 

The signs of this help may be discerned, I 
think, in the following aspects of our history : 

1. We were mostly strangers to one another 
and strangers in this great city. We had been 
brought together from twenty different States of 
our land and from nine foreign countries. We 
were all poor. The straitness of our affairs at 
home had driven most of us to the metropolis. 
As a distinguished bishop once wrote me: 
" You went to New York on your own busi- 
ness; God has kept you there on His." Our 
personal losses and troubles were overruled by 
the Almighty hand for the inauguration of a 
great and growing religious movement. A true 
Christian is known by his embarking all his 
interests in the cause of Jesus, and estimating 
the total sum of his life by its result in advanc- 
ing the work of Jesus in the hearts of men. 
Our Heavenly Father helped us away from our 
circumstances of comfort and out of the old 
ruts in which we had been moving, because He 
had need for us in this centre of throbbing 
activity and expanding influence. 

2. He has helped us by showing us the 
insufficiency of our own works and of circum- 
stances of ease to satisfy our souls, and made 
known the reality of Christian faith and the 
sweetness of Christian brotherhood. We were 
so diverse in our habits of life, in our political 
opinions, in our theological dogmas ! We had 
lived in different lands and some had fought in 
opposing armies. We were strangers in a 
strange place. But we all believed in Jesus and 
loved Him, and when we came together each 
knew the heart of a stranger, and in our sym- 
pathy we forgot our smaller differences long 
enough to ascertain our greater love. That 
greater love has dominated. It has proved too 
strong for prejudice and evil passion. We have 
demonstrated to ourselves that this fraternity 
which is in Jesus is a reality, and not a catch- 
word, and not a pretence. When we go away, 
or if we settle down again into comfortable cir- 
cumstances, we can never forget that. The Lord 
has helped us by our troubles to that truth. 

3. The help of the Lord may be seen in our 
gradual growth, — in both the growth and the 



Eben-Ezer— An Anniversary Sermon. 



gradualness thereof. We have never ceased to 
grow. We have never had a communion with- 
out additions. And before we organized into a 
church we were growing in knowledge of our- 
selves, of each other, of the superiority of the 
common Christian faith to the several manifest- 
ations thereof, without losing our regard for 
those manifestations. Our hearts grew. How 
different things seem to me now, from their 
appearance five years ago ! How much more 
valuable the Christian faith, how much more 
beautiful the Christian hope, how much sweeter 
the Christian love. 

Now, suppose the whole thing could have 
been in existence when we arrived ; a large 
church edifice, with additional church conveni- 
ences, a written constitution, and an endowment. 
It seems at first as though that would have been 
so comfortable. No, my brethren, we should 
have had no cement of sorrow and struggle. If 
Christ had brought His religion into ready- 
made cathedrals, it would have been bewildered 
with the lights and suffocated with the incense. 
It requires a great moral constitution to endure 
prosperity. We were spared that. We were 
sixteen people at first, and six were of one 
family. . As each person came in we knew him, 
his humors, his habits of thought, his charac- 
ter. And, then, in our plannings and workings 
to keep things running, we have learned how to 
work together, we have found who were boast- 
ers and who were worthless and who had high 
principle, and so we have sifted one another, 
and secured strong footing in one another's 
respect and affection. We have had no " con- 
stitution" to discuss and to be an embarrass- 
ment. We determined to serve Jesus as occa- 
sion arose, and so ours is a living church 
grown up out of a living germ, and not a thing 
cut out of stone or carved out of wood, but a 
growth. We have felt for the sun, as plants 
do, and we are ready to run along any path or 
over any wall that will bring us to where the 
sun shines. 

You know that your pastor did not step into 
a warm endowed " living," but having declined 
offers of comfort and stayed with you, you can 
never hereafter suspect him of being inordinately 
moved by merely secular motives. And I know 
you. If I had been rich, the pastor of a rich 
church, how could I have told what drew you ? 
In going to a strange place there is a great 
temptation to join an " influential church." 
You know many who were decided by that view 
to go to old, settled, rich churches when they 
came to the city. It would help them in their 



" getting on." But the Lord has not helped 
such. They have no Eben-Ezer to-day. The 
people in those old, settled, rich churches have 
much sense. They could not help slighting 
those new-comers, whose motives were so appa- 
rent. But you did not so. You resolved not to 
enter into other men's works, but to work for 
yourselves, and all men respect us now. We have 
this day an Eben-Ezer, and can say "Hitherto 
hath the Lord helped us /" Our very poverty 
originally of numbers, money, and plans, but 
shows more distinctly the help which the Lord 
has given. 

4. The Lord has helped us to demonstrate the 
unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The 
Christianity of the last several centuries has been 
exhibited under the phase of many " denomina- 
tions," and this had been laid as an objection 
to the door of Christianity. We do not so 
consider it. The fact rather makes in proof of 
the divine power of life that is in the Christian 
faith. When the prism analyzes the white light 
of the sun into seven primary colors, do we say 
that these prismatic colors demonstrate the non- 
existence of light ? Why, quite the contrary. 
Is not light one ? Is not the rainbow manifold ? 
Can any scientist dare to say dogmatically ex- 
actly how many different shades of colors there 
are ? But is not light one ? So of our " denomi- 
nations." This distinctiveness is proof of the 
unity of the faith, and of its power. Sometimes 
a playful hit is made at the " Church of the 
Strangers" as being an " undenominational de- 
nomination." We all understand that good- 
natured pleasantry. It gratifies me to be able 
to bear witness that I have never heard one of 
you speak disparagingly of the existence of de- 
nominations ; and you will bear me witness that 
I honor them all, in all proper ways and at all 
proper times, and that there is no one of them 
which I would blot from existence to-day; and 
that if a hundred new denominations should 
spring up in my lifetime I should rejoice, even 
as it would gratify me to know that the instru- 
ments of science were being brought to such 
perfection as to be able to detect and separate 
and name a new color on the solar spectrum 
each year of my existence. 

The several denominations exist by reason of 
the analyzing power of the human mind, and 
they are all the product of One Truth. If the 
solar spectrum be thrown on a transparent me- 
dium, the rays that pass through can be gathered 
on the other side and recombined into white 
light. The "Church of the Strangers" seems 
called to do that very thing. We do not force 



Ehen-Ezer—An Anniversary Sermon. 



65 



anything nor bind any one, but we do perform 
the synthesis. We demonstrate that indigo, 
violet, blue, red, orange, yellow, green, must be 
recognized as colors, and that they all come from 
the white light, for when, as solar rays, they are 
brought together they produce the white light. 
We bring those rays together. We do not say 
that there is no color but white, and, because 
these denominations do not resolve themselves 
into our form, denounce them as having no 
light. They are the legitimate result of the in- 
tellectual analysis of Christianity, the " Church 
of the Strangers" is the legitimate result of the 
affectional synthesis of Christianity. 

All the Churches exist representatively in our 
Church. There are, or have been, with us, per- 
sons from at least seven different generic denom- 
inations. They have not ceased to be Baptist, 
Congregational, Dutch Reformed, Episcopal, Lu- 
theran, Methodist, or Presbyterian ; but they have 
become more Christianly Baptist,more Christian- 
ly Episcopal, more Christianly Methodists, more 
Christianly Presbyterian. We are not separatists. 
The Church of the Strangers belongs to all the 
Churches ; all the Churches belong to the Church 
of the Strangers. No man is fit to be a member of 
any Church who could not belong to this Church, 
if the Lord's providence threw him hitherward ; 
nor would we knowingly take into our fellowship 
any man who was not tit to be a member of any 
of the existing denominations. The Lord has 
nelped us forward, step by step, by His Holy 
Spirit, through the past few years, to this blessed 
position. Five years ago, perhaps few of us 
could have seen this and done this, as we now 
do. It has come by a growth. There has never 
been a sermon preached distinctively on the 
subject, nor an essay read, nor a discussion in 
any of our meetings. Eben-ezer ! We discover 
how the Lord has helped us, and this day we 
set up a memorial of a quietly and spiritually 
consummated Christian unity. We are, by God's 
grace, and we say it to His glory, — we are THE 
World's Evangelical Alliance ecclesi- 
asticized. 

5. While so independent, we are so depend- 
ent. We could not probably exist as an organ- 
ization if all the churches from which we have 
come should turn against us. In our first solemn 
league and' covenant it was stipulated " that 
nothing herein or hereby done shall be con- 
sidered as affecting the relations to any branch 
of Christ's Church now held by any, except so 
far as they themselves shall choose, nor as in 
any way or degree touching the ecclesiastical 
relations of the Pastor." 



Now, suppose the authorities of the church 
of which I was, and am, a minister, had failed 
to have quite enough sagacity or quite enough 
grace to see that in this work to which I had 
been called by a series of remarkable provi- 
dences, I have been doing much for my own 
denomination while doing much for other de_ 
nominations, and perhaps still more for our 
common Christianity ; or, suppose the churches 
from which you have come did not recognize us 
as being such a body of faithful men among 
whom the word of God was preached and the 
sacraments duly administered, as that they still 
give you the right-hand of fellowship and take 
you back on your letters from this church, how 
very greatly embarrassed we might have been 
in our work for Jesus ! 

But the hearts of all men are in His hands, 
and " hitherto hath the Lord helped us." How 
greatly we have been strengthened by the love 
of our brethren of the several churches. How 
delightful it has been to have Presbyterian and 
Episcopal and Baptist and Methodist and 
Lutheran clergymen ministering at our altars ! 
Shall we ever forget the delightful season of our 
reopening exercises, blessed by the presence 
and prayers and preaching of such gifted and 
honored servants of Jesus as Armitage and Bacon, 
Booth and Crooks, De Witt and Durbin, Hol- 
dich and Hutton, Kcenig and Marshall, Mingins 
and Moran, Munsey and Prentiss, Prime and 
Schaff, Skinner and John Cotton Smith ! O 
by what hands and hea^s and hearts the Lord 
has helped us ! How He has turned His dear 
people of every name toward us and our 
hearts toward them ! 

And when He gave us a House of Prayer, it 
was not a new, raw building, but a dear old 
church to which a thousand hearts were attached, 
a house made holy by the association of a line 
of learned and godly ministers, by more than a 
quarter of a century of prayer and praise, an 
edifice which had been the birthplace of many 
a child of God now gone home to the Father's 
House, and of many still actively engaged in 
the Father's work on earth ! What a help is 
this, my beloved ! 

How kind were the courtesies of the Mercer- 
street Presbyterian Church to us in the transfer 
of the property. What a help it is to have such 
an earnest body of Christians for favoring 
neighbors ! I never hear the name of one of 
my predecessors in this pulpit that it does not 
stimulate me to make full proof of my own 
ministry. I do sometimes fear that I shall not 
keep up the standard erect and floating as they 



66 



Eben-Ezer—An Jbvniversary Sermon. 



did. I do sometimes fear that in fidelity and 
liberality and devotion you, dearly beloved, 
may fall short of the work of your predecessors ! 
But let us take courage. Eben-ezer ! By them 
hath the Lord helped us ! 

6. Lastly, brethren, let us remind one another 
again that this Church is not the product of our 
devising and our skill. If much had not been 
done before, we could not have done this now. 
The Lord prepared the way. The formation of 
the British and Foreign Bible Society, and of 
our American Bible Society, and kindred 
Catholic charities ; the Evangelical Alliance 
and State Universities and other institutions, 
have been bringing together the good men of 
the different denominations. The way was 
prepared before us. The Lord ripened public 
of inion for us. The year in which I was born 
no such church as this probably could have 
existed in America. But here we are, organized, 
recognized, consolidating, daily growing in 
love, bringing the order of Episcopalians, the 
stability of Presbyterians, the tenacity of Bap- 
tists, the conservatism of the Dutch Reformed, 
and the free fervor of Methodists into one 
Church, a Church that belongs to Jesus, and 
for His sake belongs to the world. Eben-ezer ! 
Hitherto hath the Lord helped us! Let us 
never be tempted to boast as if we had done 
it. O, no! It is the Lord's work. We are 



strangers and sojourners as all our fathers 
were ; but oh ! may this Church endure when 
we shall have passed to our fathers. 

And now let us all bow before the Lord and 
devoutly lift our hearts in praise and prayei, 
saying — 

O Lord God Almighty, the Lord of 
Hosts, Thou doest what Thou wilt amid 
the armies of the skies and among the 
children of men. we laud and magnify 
Thy Holy Name for all Thou hast done 
for us. We receive all our discipline 
and all Thy pleasant works toward us 
as from the hands of infinite mercy. 
Hitherto Thou hast helped us. Help us 
forever hereafter. let this church be 
as a rainbow round thy throne. accept 
this Annual Memorial Service as our 
Eben-ezer. May it be to us as a pillar 
of Covenant and of Hope. May each 
worshipper now record thy mercies 
toward his own soul ! hear us, good 
Lord ! In all time of struggle and 
affliction and anxiety, in the hour of 
death and at the judgment, help us, o 
Lord, help us ! And to the Father, the 
Son, and the Holy Spirit shall be all 
glory and honor, all homage and love, 
forever and ever. amen. 



XI. 

jl p x x i t u a \-m i n A k & tx 1 1 . 

ft REJOICE IN THE LORD ALWAY : AND AGAIN I SAY, REJOICE. LET YOUR MODERATION BE 
KNOWN UNTO ALL MEN. THE LORD IS AT HAND. BE YE CAREFUL FOR NOTHING; BUT 
IN EVERYTHING, BY PRAYER AND SUPPLICATION WITH THANKSGIVING, LET YOUR REQUESTS 
BE MADE KNOWN UNTO GOD. AND THE PEACE OF GOD, WHICH PASSETH ALL UNDER- 
STANDING, SHALL KEEP YOUR HEARTS AND MINDS THROUGH CHRIST JESUS."— PHILIP- 
PIANS, IV. 4-7. 



There is a natural world, a world whose 
phenomena address our senses, a world consist- 
ing of the things which are seen. 

There is a spiritual world, a world whose 
facts address our faith, a world consisting of 
things which are not seen. 

It is folly to ignore the one. It is no less folly 
to ignore the other. True wisdom lies in re- 
garding both, in adequately acknowledging the 
claims of each, and skillfully adjusting their 
relations to each other. A man may be so en- 
grossed by the natural world as to live as if there 
were no spiritual world. Such a man becomes 
a gross materialist. A man may be so fas- 
cinated by speculations on the spiritual world 
as to live as if there were no natural world. 
Such a man becomes a mystic, and perhaps a 
fanatic. 

We are now in this world. Our business is 
with this world. We have functions and duties 
here. All true religion must help us to dis- 
charge these. Whatever does not is worthless. 
Whatever hinders is harmful. We are to gain 
all the culture of every sense, and all the intel- 
lectual discipline which the acquisition of learn- 
ing through those senses will bring us. And we 
are to have all the pleasure of such process of 
cultivation and acquisition. Life is to be as 
much as possible delightful growth. We are 
not to disdain this life, nor the methods of its 
support, as eating, drinking, sleeping, dressing. 
We are not to feel that we are wasting immortal 
powers when we are engaged in legitimate vis- 
iting and trading. The ceremonies and polite- 
nesses of life are not despicable. All things that 
aid ourselves or others in passing through life, 
and gathering all its good and discharging all 
its duties, must be valued. The Heavenly 
Father did not make the world and mortal life 
for nothing. We are not yet in heaven, but on 
earth, and should behave accordingly. 

Rut there is a spiritual world. By that I do 
not mean a world of vague floating gases ; va- 



pory, silent, spectral entities ; awful damned 
goblins ; — but substantial individuals, whose 
substances do not report themselves to us 
through the bodily senses as matter does — be- 
ings who think and feel and will and act, but 
who are not acted on by matter as we are ; and, 
by the spiritual world, I mean, moreover, that 
system of laws which has not matter for its ob- 
ject, but which preserves the cosmical order of 
the unseen world of spiritual existences. 

It seems folly to ignore the existence of either 
world, when they are so intimately connected. It 
is wisdom, however, to adjust their relations in 
our minds, and to live with due regard to both. 
Our present business is with the natural world. 
We are now in it. The present use of the spir- 
itual world to us is the influence it has upon our 
modes of existence in the natural world. After 
death, the use of the natural world to us will be 
the culture we shall have gained therein. The 
influence which the spiritual world ought to be 
permitted to have upon us is not destructive of 
natural life and its modes, but is powerfully 
modifying. 

To me, brethren, one of the most exciting 
and interesting studies is the comparison of the 
characters and lives of two men, one of whom 
lives without recognition or use of the spiritual 
world, and the other of whom lives largely 
under its influence. They have the same phys- 
ical and intellectual and moral constitution ; 
they are set down amid the same social cir- 
cumstances, and have the same class of duties 
to discharge at home, in society, and in the 
markets of the world. Each recognizes the 
wants of the body, each comprehends the de- 
mands of society so far as courtesy and good 
neighborhood are concerned ; but one, in addi- 
tion to all this, has a supernal light upon his 
intellect, feels in his soul the uplifting and in- 
tensifying and strengthening influence which 
a sense of the approach of something grand 
always produces. 



68 



Spiritual-mindedness. 



The first of these men clings to the outer 
shell of this life, the other gains the essential 
good there is, and loses nothing of the outside. 
The one creeps along the paths of life, or goes 
driven as a galley-slave from the cradle to the 
grave ; the other walks majestically, as a king 
walks over his domain. 

The fact is, that nothing gives such elevation 
of character, and such power, and such con- 
sistency of living, as a real sense of the presence 
of the spiritual world. All history proves it. 
The men who have been mere materialists, 
whatever their original gifts, have finally sunk 
down and become of the earth earthy. They 
have been able to go only to the land's end. 
The men who have been spiritually-minded 
have become poets and philosophers and proph- 
ets, winged souls, living on land, on water, in 
air — have led the way of human progress, shining 
at the head of the marching column of hu- 
manity. They have lost none of earth, and 
have gained all of heaven. No great man, no 
Moses, no Paul, no Mahomet, no Napoleon, no 
human being who has dug new channels for the 
stream of the world, ever lived his life of labor 
or died his death of glory, who did not live un- 
der some profound and keen sense of the pres- 
ence of the spiritual world in the midst of the 
natural world. It was this, in its best sense, 
and not their natural talents, and not their ge- 
nius for religion, and not their position in the 
history of the world, which made the Apostles 
of Jesus Christ the men most influential on 
human destiny since Christ died. Paul felt this. 
He did not disparage the life which now is, he 
rather exalted it, constantly bringing Upon it 
the power of the life to come. 

In this text he represents the effect of a spir- 
itual faith on the human life. The key to the 
whole is, " The Lord is at hand." He displayed 
that before all eyes. He rang its notes on all 
ears. Pleasure and Pain and Business and Ac- 
tivity and Rest and Hope and Despair, all 
heard the Apostles of Jesus crying, at midnight 
and at noon, " The Lord is at hand !" All life 
was to be conducted as it should be in the 
midst of a world of spiritual things which might 
at any moment break in and blazon on itself all 
mortal eyes. Nor must we fail to notice that it 
was not to terrify but to help that this announce- 
ment was made. Not only as a Judge but as a 
Helper is the Lord at hand. It was specially 
this latter view which, I think, was in Paul's 
mind when he wrote this passage. 

There are four characteristic effects of spiritual- 
mindedness as thus understood, which are indi- 



cated in the words of Paul which have been 
announced as the text. 

i. It will surprise materialists that the first of 
these is Joy. The Apostle says, " Rejoice in 
the Lord alway ; and again I say, Rejoice." Joy 
is the delightful excitement of feelings of pleas- 
ure at some good gained and now actually en- 
joyed, or at the prospect of some good which 
one has a reasonable hope of obtaining. 

The natural world can give joy. It is folly to 
underestimate its capabilities in this direction. 

There is the joy of youth, when the blood is 
hot, and burdens have not bowed the man and 
disappointments have not soured, when there 
are no bitter memories and there are many 
beautiful hopes. Why should not a man rejoice 
in his youth ? 

There is the joy of health, when all the hu- 
mors are wholesome, and the circulation unim- 
peded and the nerves unjaded and the lungs 
sound and the brain clear, when food has a 
pleasant taste and sleep is sweet and activity is 
exhilarating. 

There is the joy of success, when the plans 
have been well laid and well worked and are 
beginning to produce the desired results; when 
the battle has been won, the office has been 
secured, the fortune has been accumulated, and 
the bride has been wedded. 

There is the joy of the affections, when the 
heart has loved well, whether wisely or unwisely, 
and when all its outpouring, as of a cloud's treas- 
ures to a lake, comes back in a warm cloud- 
making mist of tender appreciation. 

There are a thousand sources of joy in the 
natural world. This world would be beautiful, 
as an unsubstantial dream is beautiful, even if 
there were no spiritual world to make realities 
that shall be counterparts of dreams. The great 
defect of that joy which is not " in the Lord" is 
that it is so transitory. It has really some re- 
semblance to a dream. The dream's existence 
depends on sleep. The sleeper walks on solid 
ground in front of a solid palace amid solid 
beauties and delights, so far as he knows or sus- 
pects. But the wing of an insect touching his 
eyelid shakes down his marble palaces and scat- 
ters his manifold delights. The moment the 
sleep is broken the dream is gone. Its basis 
is unsubstantial. 

Natural joy is good while it lasts, but it lasts 
so short a time ! Youth and Health and Suc- 
cess and Riches are perpetually passing away 
in their very enjoyment. The soul of man has 
a craving for that kind of joy which will not be 
exhausted by the enjoyment thereof. The roots 



Spiritital-mindedness. 



69 



of the joy must be in the spiritual world. The 
spiritual world underlies and sustains the natural. 
One may put the roots of his plant in the sand, 
and a summer breeze may sweep both soil and 
plant away. The trees that are to remain and 
grow must send their roots deep and far through 
the compact soil. 

It is to be noticed that our Most Holy Faith does 
not offer us a choice, as between natural joy and 
spiritual joy. There is no need of abandonment 
of the joys the sources of which our Heavenly 
Father has placed in nature. On the contrary, 
they are to be increased and intensified by our 
spiritual joys. We may illustrate that by a com- 
parison of our less with our more transitory 
natural joys. He who has only now and then a 
brief pleasure has it sadly marred by the thought 
that when it is over he is to fall back into his old 
melancholy way of misery ; whereas he who 
knows that this smaller pleasure, to be over 
soon, is the precursor of a greater joy to endure 
much longer, has all that it is possible to get out 
of the smaller joy. 

Now I put it to the consciences of you, men 
and women, whose whole delight is in what the 
physical world can give you, whether the arts 
and sciences and literature and politics and 
riches and worldly success would not be trebly 
sweet and enjoyable if you did not feel that if 
these were swept away you would really have 
nothing left. It is that fear of a frightful sense 
of abandonment at death which makes death a 
dreaded anticipation. You cannot say of the 
invisible but substantial City of God, "all my 
springs are in thee." You do not " rejoice in 
the Lord ;" therefore you cling to your mansions, 
your robes, your equipages, your dazzling sur- 
roundings, with a wild and crazy grasp. The 
hand that strips them away leaves you naked, 
shivering ghosts. Therefore, those mansions, 
pictures, robes, chariots, and brilliant assem- 
blages do not give you half the pleasure they 
might. If you did but "rejoice in the Lord," 
if you were " spiritually-minded," all of earth 
that is sweet and beautiful and grand would be 
sweeter, more beautiful, and more sublime. It 
is because "the Lord is at hand," that all life 
becomes intensely significant and surpassingly 
splendid. To a "spiritually-minded" man life 
is the golden steps to a throne at once glorious 
and permanent. " The Lord is at hand" to help 
every human joy. To be spiritually-minded is 
to be in possession of a central spring of real 
joyfulness. 

2. And to be spiritually-minded is to have 
V*ibits of honesty in business, of candor and 



good temper and forgiveness, for that is the 
meaning of the word translated "moderation" 
in our version. It signifies our treatment of 
others rather than our management of our- 
selves, and has special reference to our feelings 
toward those who are not agreeable, who rather 
are disagreeable, and perhaps inimical. 

This is a very provoking world. There is 
hardly a day in which some one does not leave 
undone what we feel should be done, or do those 
things which are injurious or painful to us. And 
these things create disagreeable feelings in us. 
And when we come to examine the case closely 
we discover that these feelings are really an in- 
crease of the pain and injury to ourselves and 
not so injurious to those who do us wrong. All 
this spoils our temper, as the temper of metal is 
spoiled by being alternately plunged from the 
hot coals into cold water and from cold water 
into the glowing furnace. The meanness and 
tricks of others make us shut up ourselves, 
guard our speech, conceal our opinions, hide 
our lives, and become uncandid. We do not 
like men to have knowledge of all the ap- 
proaches to our central life. How shall one be 
open-hearted? "He will be so misrepresented." 
" The world will call him a simpleton." " Se- 
crecy is necessary for success in trade." We 
say all these old worldly things to ourselves, and 
so draw the domino over our faces and become 
suspicious and cynical and hard. Life becomes 
a game. We must not show our hands. The 
wicked will take advantage of it, and we shall 
lose. 

Well, if this natural life be all there is for a 
man, then he cannot afford to be candid and 
good tempered toward all men. But a spiritu- 
ally-minded man can so afford. "The Lord is 
at hand," at hand to help him, if in the honesty 
of his soul he be fair and open-hearted and for- 
giving, restraining his resentments and dealing 
honestly with his fellows, even in trade, in which 
equity at times seems ruinous. Put the Lord 
away from you, and forget the spiritual world, 
and plunge into business, saying to yourself that 
the strongest swimmer will reach the shore first, 
that each man must take care of himself, that 
you have nothing to do for your fellow, that all 
a man can get out of this life is material wealth, 
and he is the most successful man who gets the 
most. If you fail, how utter will be that failure : 
if you succeed, how barren will be that success ! 

Whether you will or not, " the Lord is at 
hand." He sees all in the light of the spiritual 
world, and judges accordingly. He is "at 
hand" to help. The stevedore on the busy 



70 



Spiritual-mindedness. 



wharves, the factory operative amid the roaring 
machinery, the capitalist handling millions and 
making up plans which he hopes will be far- 
reaching after his death, may all have a sense 
of the nearness of the helping Lord, their 
" moderation," if that shall mean fairness, self- 
control, and forgiveness, shall be known of all 
men. Men outside may not know the source, 
but it has come from a discovery that the opera- 
tions of time may be connected with the perpe- 
tuities of eternity, and thus rendered glorious 
and sublime. Superficial men do not see the 
eternal under the temporary, do not see the 
Lord at hand, — so, they must have their gains 
now; they must give blow for blow, with- no 
forgiveness ; they cannot trust the unseen, the 
future, the eternal ; they have no help from the 
Lord, who is at hand. To be truly and intelli- 
gently spiritually-minded is to have a habit of 
candor, equity, and sweet temper. 

3. The third characteristic is elevation of soul, 
a loftiness, a serenity of temper over which the 
changes of mortal life may pass as storms do 
over a mountain, loosing here and there a stone, 
breaking here and there a tree, shaking the 
whole mass with its thunder peal, and drenching 
it with its passionate rain-tears, but leaving the 
mountain standing, firm, in its place, rooted in 
the earth. 

Much of our life is frittered away with carking 
cares and anxieties. They come from too close 
a look at things which are temporal. We are so 
near them. This nearness must be corrected by 
spiritual-mindedness. To a man who has no 
sense of a spiritual world — mark, I do not say be- 
lief in a spiritual world, for many give intellect- 
ual assent to the statement of the facts without 
having an impressive sense of its reality— to a 
man who has no feeling of the nearness of the 
Lord, as observing him and being ready to help 
him, every trouble exaggerates itself. He has 
only time and human effort to depend upon, to 
accomplish all the purposes of his life. If they 
fail he is ruined. He must do it now, or never. 
He becomes breathlessly hurried and flurried 
and care-worn. He cannot put his full powers 
to any one thing, because he is troubled about 
many things. We are always able to propose 
more than we have the power to accomplish. 
Our work is to do all we can by the best employ- 
ment of our best powers now. That best em- 
ployment can never be, without a feeling that 
the world of spiritual things is upon us, that the 
Lord is very, very nigh. We come to know 
something of a thing by holding it off, still 
more by proje:ting it far into eternity and 



setting it down for comparison among spiritual 
things. 

True faith and right spiritual-mindedness do 
not unfit us for the plainest duties of life. There 
are things we must do, and to do them we must 
think of them, and thought is often care. True 
faith does not teach carelessness. A man has 
not become extraordinarily pious when he does 
not care how his business goes and what people 
think of him. A woman does not deserve can- 
onization when she is so taken up with her pray- 
ers and her religious conversation that her chil- 
dren go unwashed and uncombed, and she does 
not care for it. The care of earnest thoughtful- 
ness with intent to do right is not degrading, 
nor weakening. No man should wish to be rid 
of it. It is the care that distracts, that pulls 
one's mind many ways, that disturbs and dis- 
tresses and perplexes, which a wise man would 
desire to avoid, so that he may have all his pow- 
ers to devote to caring for those things which 
are of real importance and the caring for which 
will do some good. That comes to a man more 
and more, as he more and more makes real to 
himself that the Lord stands by him, nigh, "at 
hand," to observe and, to help him. 

We are sometimes afraid that if we do not 
answer every letter, visit everybody, accomplish 
everything, our reputation will suffer, and our 
abilities be circumscribed or diminished. " The 
Lord is at hand." He knows the motive and 
sees the exertion. He will help. He will 
strengthen. Then, when we have done our 
whole best, He will see that we take no damage 
from evil tongues. 

To believe that the Lord is at my hand, and 
at the hand of the men whom I most fear or 
most love, influencing them and me, connecting 
all business and acts, working together with 
men for grand results which are to affect sociefy 
a thousand years to come, what an antidote 
to fretful carefulness is this ! When you have 
striven to train your child as an heir of immor- 
tality, with what freedom from care you can 
hand him over to the Lord. When you have 
been diligent in business all day, neglecting 
nothing, hurrying nothing, acting as an agent 
for the Lord, leaving all your books and trans- 
actions to His inspection and protection ; when 
you have had intelligent, faithful, trustful care- 
fulness all day, how free from fretting care you 
ought to be at night ! When I have prepared 
my sermon for you, thinking carefully, reading 
discreetly, earnestly striving to find what is the 
mind of the Spirit in the Word of God, and 
then have delivered the sermon, how free I 



Spiritual-mindedness. 



71 



should be from distraction of spirit, for was not 
the Lord near me in the study, and " at hand" 
in the pulpit ? To be wisely spiritually-minded 
is to be serenely lofty. 

4. The last characteristic mentioned by the 
Apostle is devoutness : " In everything, by prayer 
and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your 
requests be made known unto God." 

The materialist who has any belief in God 
regards him as a far-off existence, scarcely as an 
estimable power in human affairs, perhaps too 
lofty and grand to have anything to do with the 
world, except to have flung it with magnificent 
indifference from His hand of 'omnipotence ; 
and feels, perhaps, that after all even that is 
only a mythical and poetical way of stating the 
natural origin of the universe. To be intelli- 
gently spiritually-minded is to have a sense of 
the personal presence of the Lord, as of One to 
whom we do not have to go for the reason that 
He is so near us, as of One who takes personal 
interest in every plan and perplexity and 
pleasure of our lives, to whom we speak specific- 
ally, as we do to our physician or our lawyer, 
showing all the worst of our case. 

Brethren, we are not spiritually-minded when 
we think that God does not care for every 
little thing that happens to us. He does care. 
It is when we are cold and materialistic in our 
views that we ''say our prayers," speaking to 
God in such vague generalities as would not 
convey to our most intimate friends any ade- 
quate idea of the state of our affairs and our 
feelings. We are to " make our requests known 
unto God," not that He needs to be informed, 
but that we need to be assured that He will 
hear us ask for the needed loaf of bread, the 
needed dollar, the needed garment; that we 
need to be assured that the spiritual is the real. 

How often it has occurred in your history that 
when you had reached some obstruction, and 
you were in great perplexity, the voice of a 
friend at the door has reanimated and recheered 
you. You knew him to be a brave and powerful 
man, full of resources, wide in influence, and 
loving you tenderly. The half-hour given to 
talking over your matters with him has brought 
you back to serenity. True devoutness consists 
in maintaining just such relations with the 
Lord. 

By ' ' prayer" we make known to God what 
are the real desires of our hearts. By "depreca- 
tion" (for so the word means) we make known 
what things are offensive to our moral sense. 
By "thanksgiving" we acknowledge the count- 
less thousands of favors we have already received 



and our acquiescence in whatever the Lord shall 
send in answer to the prayers we are now offer- 
ing. That is devotion. No man can enjoy it 
if he be not spiritually-minded. We cannot 
talk to a God who is farther off than the stars 
and colder than the celestial spaces. We can- 
not make plaint and prayer to an impersonality. 
If there is no spiritual world, and no " God the 
Father," the Universe is absolutely heartless. 
Old Lear may shoot useless pleadings into the 
face of the whistling wind. The little child may 
drop his prayer down into the bottomless void. 
Nothing comes back from hurricane or void. 
But there is a Lord, who is Father. The Lord 
is at hand. He is waiting to be gracious. He 
is plenteous in helpfulness. 

In our earthly associations it is considered a 
desperate condition to be without a human friend 
to whom one can utter one's desires, and fears, 
and joys. The man who is spiritually-minded 
is never in such desperation. He has the ex- 
haustless Lord for his helper, a helper that is 
never afar off. 

I have gone over these four characteristics 
and products of spiritual-mindedness, beloved 
brethren, because I knew that fanaticism has 
made the word obnoxious to polite ears. Such 
spiritual-mindedness, as we sometimes hear 
talked of, and professed, naturally disgusts 
thoughtful men ; but thoughtful men owe it to 
themselves to consider whether there may not 
be a genuine coin represented by this base 
counterfeit. 

There is a spiritual world, or there is not. If 
not, then every indirect acknowledgment of its 
existence, whether by word or act, is a discredit 
to a man's intellect, and everything that savors 
of religion is tainted with hypocrisy. If there 
be a spiritual world it ought to be " minded." 
Its bearings on this world ought to be regarded. 
It is the widest field for human investigation. 
If it have any existence it is supernal and par- 
amount. To be in the midst of a spiritual world 
and not know it, is to be blind. To perceive it 
in any measure, and totally disregard it in all 
one's habits of thought and feeling and action 
is not philosophy — it is sheer madness. Accord- 
ing to the known laws of mind, one who does 
believe in a spiritual world, and shapes his life 
accordingly, will legitimately acquire these four 
characteristics of joyfulness, good temper, lofti- 
ness, and devoutness. And see, they make a 
noble character. A man whose soul has in it 
a fountain of joy, whose temper is honest and 
open and sweet, whose life is unfretted by little 
cares, and whose highest friendship is with the 



72 



Spiritual-mincledness. 



highest spirit in existence, must be the kind of 
a man of whom we all might well wish the 
world were now full. 

I close by calling your attention to the gen- 
eral summary which the Apostle adds, "And 
the peace of God, which passeth all understand- 
ing, shall keep your hearts and minds through 
Christ Jesus." 

Peace ! Blessed word ! How it fans the 
brows of feverish care like an angel's wing ! 
How it falls like repose from the lips of omnipo- 
tent love on the billows of the storm-tossed lake 
of human life ! How it turns the spear of con- 
flict downward, and hushes the fiendish up- 
roar of war ! We can understand something of 
peace. Our tossings have made it comprehensi- 
ble even to men whose lives are most worldly. 
The peace man gives and woman gives is often 
a balmy blessing. But there is a peace of God, 
such peace as God the Father has in His eternal 
heavens, such peace as God the Father gives to 
His perturbed children. That peace does pass 
all human understanding. It is higher and 
deeper and wider than the human understand- 
ing. It passes understanding as space passes 
form. It lies through and around. The peace 
of God is the casket that surrounds and holds 
all the jewels of the soul. 

When we are spiritually-minded, brethren, 
then that peace keeps our "hearts." These 
poor, restless hearts, how they need keeping ! 
Our desires and loves and hates, how they run 
us wild at times ! How these hearts swell, 
almost to the bursting ! The peace of God 
shall keep them ! Shall keep them steady and 
true, when temptations and troubles and 
bereavements seem bearing them away from 
God. 



It shall keep our " minds." We shall not be 
distracted, not crazed. No mind loses its 
balance so long as it perceives that the Lord is 
at hand to help. The clouds may gather and 
the storm may burst, but the Lord is at hand. 
There may come circumstances in our history 
which seem to contradict truth and God, and all 
our hopes and instincts, so that the feet of our 
minds do well-nigh slip. But the Lord is at 
hand. We cannot understand it, but He un- 
derstands it. We cannot see any possible way 
of deliverance, but He sees it. We may have 
exhausted our resources, but His are infinite. 
We lay our wearied intellects to rest, pillowed 
on the peace of God. 

The climax is in the Apostle's concluding 
phrase, "Through Christ Jesus." That is the key 
to Paul's philosophy. All abstractions become 
concrete in Jesus. He is the medium, the 
nexus, the connecting link. Heaven and earth 
meet in Jesus. The natural and the spiritual 
are one in Him. We get our motive and our 
power and our method to be spiritually-minded 
from Jesus. He is the Lord. He is at hand. 
He is our Helper. Therefore we "rejoice al- 
way," because we rejoice not in ourselves, nor in 
the world, but in Him. Therefore are we "care- 
ful for nothing," for we have "cast all our care 
on Him, because He careth for us." Therefore 
" in everything, by prayer and supplication, with 
thanksgiving, we let our requests be made known 
unto God." 

So may His peace keep us, and be forever 
higher, deeper, and broader than our under- 
standing, broader than any stretch of our de- 
sires, higher than any aspirations of our hearts, 
deeper than any plummet-line of our intellects, 
and enduring as the rigor of our immortality. 



XII. 

" THE SON OF GOD, WHO LOVED ME, AND GAVE HIMSELF FOR ME." — GALATIANS, II. 20. 



Justification by faith in Christ our 
Lord and Saviour seems to be the doctrine 
which it was St. Paul's special mission to evolve 
from the facts 01 the life and death of Jesus. It 
is the central point of his thoughts, the ordi- 
nary conclusion of his arguments, the basis of 
his moral precepts. It changed his whole life, 
gave tone to his whole character, and imparted 
a vigorous consistency to his entire system of 
teaching. 

And it is an observable fact that every man 
who has greatly impressed the Christian world 
since the days of St. Paul has been able to kin- 
dle the flames of ardent piety only in proportion 
as he has had the ability to make the people feel 
the power of the truth that is in this doctrine of 
justification by faith in Jesus. Luther said of it 
that it is "the article on which the Church 
stands or falls." 

Paul never shifted his doctrine — although he 
varied his methods — to suit what he conceived 
to be the different mental and spiritual wants of 
his hearers. In bigoted Jerusalem, in learned 
Athens, in luxurious Corinth, in imperial Rome, 
and in ignorant Gallogrcecia, he held distinctly 
before the people the statements that (i) by the 
deeds of the law could no man be justified ; (2) 
only by faith in Christ as the personal Saviour 
of all who believe could a man be justified before 
God ; and (3) that this faith in Jesus wrought a 
total and most beneficial change in the charac- 
ter of every true believer. This was the glad 
tidings, the Gospel, which he had borne to Ga- 
latia, and in which the churches of Galatia had 
been organized. The occasion of reaffirming 
these doctrines with great clearness and empha- 
sis was created by the mischievous mission of 
certain Judaizing teachers who had crept in after 
Paul's departure, and had industriously sought, 
with some measure of success, to make the Ga- 
latians believe that the real atonement for sin 
lay in the Levitical sacrifices, and that in order 
to obtain the benefits of those sacrifices one 
must be circumcised; and so they were drawn 
away from Christ as a Saviour, while they were 
allowed to believe that He was the teacher of 
excellent moral precepts. As soon as Paul 



learned the state of affairs he addressed this 
epistle to those Churches who had so gladly 
received the simple Gospel, and had manifested 
such a wonderful and ardent attachment to him 
as their spiritual father. He made a clear and 
vigorous reply to the assaults which, like all 
other men of low and narrow minds, these men 
had made upon his character and mission when 
they could not refute his arguments ; and then 
again, with a sad and tender earnestness and 
great ability, he set forth Christ as having "re- 
deemed them from the curse of the law," and 
become the medium through which " the bless- 
ing of Abraham might come upon the Gen- 
tiles." 

In the course of his argument and defense the 
Apostle used most forcible and extraordinary 
language to set forth what he believed to be the 
effect of the doctrine of the atonement on his 
own character by reason of the strength of his 
conviction of its truth. He said that he was 
"crucified with Christ," and that he lived no 
longer, but Christ lived in him. How striking 
and sublime is the original expression of the 
Apostle, "Live no longer I, but there is living 
in me Christ !" which seems as much as to say 
that he had given Christ such a reception into 
his intellect and his heart, and that Christ was 
so powerfully transforming, that all of Paulness, 
especially of Saulness, so to speak, had been 
extirpated, and that Christness, so to speak, had 
come to take all the place thereof, "and my 
outward life, so much as still remains, I live by 
the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and 
gave Himself for me." 

How gladly the Galatians had at first received 
these doctrines ! And Paul turns to them with 
this solemn question, " O foolish Galatians, who 
hath bewitched you that you should not obey 
the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath 
been evidently set forth crucified among you ?" 
This morning, let us devoutly, tenderly, and 
ardently contemplate the great transforming 
truth of the Gospel, a truth which each human 
soul may assert of Jesus Christ, the Son of God 
—He loved me, and gave Himself for me ! 

I. It is an amazing truth / 



The Great Truth. 



He loved me ! 

There was no vacuum in His infinite heart to 
be filled, no craving of His soul to be satisfied, 
no want of His nature to be supplied by loving 
such persons as we are. We poor mortals have 
tendrils growing and going out of our hearts, 
creeping forward to the light, begging for the 
sunshine of love as for life, and seeking for that 
on which we may lean. We must love and be 
loved. The necessity of loving and being loved 
is a part of our nature. Little children open 
their hearts like morning flowers for the kisses 
of the sun, and strong men have the solemn 
silence of their hearts broken with the cry for 
"mother" and for "wife," and women's hearts 
run down to love as rivers seek the sea. And 
every full, true woman has felt the instincts of 
maternity in her heart. One of your fellow- 
parishioners, in a poem of more than ordinary 
beauty, has said, 

" Yet sitting mute in their despair, 
With their unnoticed griefs to bear, 
Are childless women everywhere ; 

Who never knew nor understood 
That which is woman's greatest good, 
The sacredness of motherhood." 

Up from a desolate hearthstone and out from 
the stateliness of a mansion whose grandeur 
gives no sufficient home, because its walls have 
never given echo to the voice of children, we 
can fancy how a motherless woman would rush 
to the " Home for the Friendless" to take up the 
beautiful babe some dying mother was compelled 
to lay down, and strive to tie about the little 
stranger the loose and throbbing mother-nerves 
of her lonely heart. But if Christ's infinite 
heart demanded objects of love, He was under 
no necessity of seeking us, poor, distant mortals. 
Consider who He was and where He was. He 
was the Son of God. He had had the love of 
the Father forever. He had lived in the high 
and tender mystery of a complete and profound 
fellowship with the Father of heaven and of 
earth. All about Him were the angels, cheru- 
bim, seraphim, — beautiful, brilliant, noble, and 
glowing. Every holy heart in the universe 
swelled with love for Him. From afar, from 
lofty throne, or from celestial mount, they gazed 
with looks of tender adoration at the only-be- 
gotten Son of the Father, or rushed to pile their 
crowns of glory at His feet and bask their sinless 
spirits in the light of His transporting smiles. 
The countless souls of the immortals on whose 
beauty lay no blight of sin, stood, shouted, soared 
all about Him in his populous heaven, and He 
could not have needed " me." 



He loved me ! 

As each man of our race says that he must 
feel that there was really nothing in our poor, 
fallen, stricken, sinking race to win the love of 
Jesus. It was not drawn out. It ca7ne. There 
was nothing in us to attract it. He loved. The 
tide set in to us and bore us up. We were not 
morally pure or beautiful, or sweet or charming. 
All these characteristics, which we are accus- 
tomed to consider the kindling causes of affec- 
tion, were lacking in us. If we had been full 
of all holy sweetness and richness, there might 
have been nothing amazing in His love. But 
ever and often toward our fellow-men we have 
a feeling that it is wonderful they love us. There 
is such an intense consciousness of real unlove- 
liness, and so much self-knowledge, that it often 
occurs to us that if our fathers or mothers, 
or wives, or very intimate and devoted friends, 
only knew all that bad of us that we ourselves 
know, they would at once throw us from their 
bosoms forever. Perhaps we save ourselves by 
the reflection that it may be that our friends 
have a similar self-consciousness, a similar self- 
knowledge, and we endure one another because 
each man endures himself. 

But when we come to reflect upon the love of 
Jesus we know that He was immaculate, that 
He did not love a fellow-sinner, and that of 
those He loved He knew more vileness, mean- 
ness, wickedness, impurity, and general moral 
unloveliness than they ever suspected in them- 
selves. It was a love that was in Him, and 
nothing more thoroughly demonstrates the 
essential purity of the lovingness of Christ than 
that He, the Sinless, really and truly loved us 
sinners. It is a saving truth to believe that in 
the universe there is not only a possible Being, 
but a real Person, who, being incapable of any 
vileness, nevertheless loves the vile ; that want 
of goodness does not throw one out of the circle 
of the possibilities of love. Blessed be God, 
the amazing truth that " He loved me" demon- 
strates that proposition. 

He loved me / 

It is an amazing truth. The more we study 
it, the more wonderful does it seem. Vile, 
wretched, corrupt, full of all hideous moral de- 
formities, if, being thus, we could now conceive 
ourselves as having first loved Him, we might 
have some explanation of this astounding fact. 
We could imagine Him looking from the lofti- 
ness of His holiness upon the poor race at His 
feet, and saying: " It is a poor, pitiful race. It 
has covered itself with shame as with a garment, 
and with iniquity as with a universal ulceration. 



The Great Truth. 



75 



It is a hideous generation in every particular 
but one, and that is that this poor ruined race 
has, amidst all the traits of character which 
render it disgusting, a disposition toward me, a 
dim sense of the beautiful, a kind of ability to 
recognize relations, and some homage for the 
high." He might have considered this and 
pitied us, and thus have begun to do something 
for us, and thus have become interested in us, 
and thus have come to love us. This would 
have been a process somewhat in accordance 
with known human methods of thought and 
feeling. But precisely the reverse of this is the 
case. Christ loved the world before the world 
knew Him, or thought of Him, or desired Him, 
or loved Him. Of no man can the Son of God 
say, " I love him because he hath first loved 
me," but every single son of man can say that, 
and must say that, of the Son of God. And 
more and more amazing this love appears as we 
consider that not simply has Jesus loved those 
who did not love Him, but also those who ab- 
solutely hated and refused Him. "God com- 
mendeth His love toward us in that while we 
were yet sinners Christ died for us." In every 
aspect, is it not an amazing truth ? 

II. It is a sustaining and consoling truth ! 

Of all things what we most want of our fellow- 
creatures is their love. Even among men it is 
true that love consecrates everything; that a 
child's obedience, a wife's obeisance, a friend's 
admiration, in the absence of love, are all alto- 
gether unsatisfactory, while the presence of love 
pleads effectually for the absence of all other 
things. Love leads all other things in a proces- 
sion, they reverently and cheerfully following. 
When you have won my whole heart, you have 
my hands and feet and brains and worldly pos- 
sessions. If the Head be emperor of the world, 
the Heart is empress, and rules. One ounce of 
love is worth tons of admiration. 

And the Heavenly Father, who knows what 
is in His children when He makes a request, 
does not ask for obedience, or service, or sur- 
render of worldly possessions, but for the heart. 
" My son, give me thy heart" 

And if God should offer to grant me instan- 
taneously and unreservedly any one thing I 
should desire, would I be fool enough to ask for 
immortal youth, or pleasurably and perpetually 
expanding powers, or growing field of activity, 
or heavenly mansion, throne, crown, sceptre, or 
harp ? No, each of these would be a barren pos- 
session, if the heart of the Lord were not toward 
me. 

What a wonderful world is this planet we in- 



habit ! How prodigiously have its capabilities 
been developed in the few years last past ! In 
the past half-century it has grown almost double. 
In one day you can now travel as far, see as 
much, do as much, live as much as you possibly 
could have done in any two days in the begin- 
ning of the century. In the geometric ratio by 
which the development of the earth seems to 
make progress, what will not be its condition a 
thousand years to come ! 

Now, suppose the Heavenly Father should 
call me to Him and say, " I have just created a 
system of ten thousand worlds, each as capable 
of development as the planet upon which you 
were born. You are to be ruler, prince, god of 
that system for ten millions of years. You shall 
have wisdom to direct its best possible issues, 
and a capability of drawing into yourself all the 
delights which the worlds themselves and the 
populations thereof can afford. I have nothing 
to say of what shall follow the close of that long 
era, only this: that neither then nor at any time 
during your brilliant autocracy shall I love you. 
Your myriads of people will love you — every one 
of them — but not I." 

What should I say ? 

I should fall at his feet and cry aloud, and 
say, " God, O God, take them all, roll the 
worlds back into thine arms again — but love me ! 
Send me back to my planet; down to New York 
— down to trouble and want and wandering and 
beggary ; smite me, like Job, from head to foot 
with boils; turn the dogs of Dives out to lick my 
sores ; and when I crawl to my cellar to lie down 
on my straw, look at me — say, ' Son, I love 
thee,' and the knowledge of thy love will be 
sweeter, better, grander there than all rule and 
dominion and power among the stars without 
thy love." 

If the Son of God give me His love, then all 
else that He has will come after, and I must be 
a safe and happy man. 

Did He love me ? Where is the proof? He 
" gave Himself for me." What does this mean ? 
We are not this morning in the temper to make 
studies in technical theology. We want to know 
what essential truth, that has instruction and 
comfort, lies in these blessed words. They ob- 
viously mean something quite voluntary, free, 
unforced, upon the part of the Son of God. He 
did something out of pure love. It was a gift, a 
surrender ; it was most comprehensive ; it was 
the gift of Himself. He expended Himself for 
me. It follows that whatever such outpour of 
treasure can purchase for me in heaven and in 
earth shall be mine. There is the sustaining 



76 



The Great Truth. 



power and comforting essence of this truth. 
" For me :" the word means " over," like a pro- 
tecting shield, 11 instead of," like a sufficient 
substitute, " saving," as when one dies for one's 
country. It implies that the doer regards the 
deed as fully repaid by the result for which it is 
performed. It always means good. Here it 
means the largest, highest, greatest good ; for 
it is the largest, highest, greatest Soul that gives 
Himself for me. Here is my rock, the heart of 
the King of kings is mine. The Lord of lords 
loves me. The Almighty is the All-loving. 
Happy is the subject whose sovereign loves him. 
Greater love can no man show than this, that 
he die for his friend. That I might see that He 
loved me, the Son of God has come in the flesh 
and given me this supreme proof in dying for 
me. 

III. It is an elevating truth. 

How do men and women become abandoned? 
They commit some deed offensive to some sec- 
tion of society, and all that belong thereto throw 
them off, abandon them, give them over to the 
ban of society ; that angers them, and they go 
further, and others abandon them, until by-and- 
by they come to feel that they have not a friend 
on earth : and perhaps they have not. They 
fall into such a state of mind that there are no 
more human restraints upon them. Then God 
seems very far off. They have violated His 
commandments. He will probably treat them 
for that just as society has treated them for 
their injuries of society. And then there are 
no divine restraints. God and man have put 
them under ban. Goodness has no more attrac- 
tion, no more reward. They then abandon 
themselves. And such men make a hell for 
themselves, and make themselves devils toward 
their race. Down, down, down they go. 

I know them, and I know how hard it is to 
labor for the good of that class. It is a very 
easy thing to preach to people like you, so well 
dressed and well conducted, so kind and consid- 
erate that your very looks draw out whatever of 
sermon there is in the preacher. But down 
among the " roughs," and the abandoned women 
it is a very different kind of work. Society has 
banned them. They ban society. A man whose 
appearance puts in any claim to gentlehood must 
expect to deliver his messages among men and 
women who are filthy in appearance and foul in 
speech, who taunt him with blasphemy and dis- 
gust him with obscenity. 

How are you to save a man of that class ? 

Make him feel that somebody loves him — that 
you love' him. It will be hard work at first. He 



has adjusted himself to the condition of being 
hated and shunned. Latterly, if any man has 
sought to do him what seemed to be a kindness, 
he has suspected a trick. What unselfish motive 
could any one have in showing kindness to a 
man who has been abandoned of God and man, 
and has no influence in heaven or earth, and 
no way to repay that kindness ? To a man who 
reasons so you must be persistent, unselfish, 
quite Christ-like in your lovingness, and by-and- 
by the law of kindness will vindicate itself. 
When he can no longer resist the conviction 
that there is one fellow-human that loves him, 
he has taken his first backward and upward 
step. He will do something to make another 
love him, and, doing so, he becomes less and 
less unlovely. And the less unlovely he be- 
comes, the more those about him first tolerate, 
then like, then love him, and the knowledge of 
being beloved makes him more lovely, and thus 
he rises. There is nothing elevates a man so 
much as being loved. 

Believe this, oh, my brethren. You that are 
not handsome, not witty, not gifted, not rich ; 
that think you have, therefore, no missionary 
power in your hands, no missionary resource at 
your control, but have loving hearts, believe 
this, and act upon it. You have such ground 
to begin your redeeming work upon as Jesus did 
not have. You have the fact that the fallen 
man is your fellow-man. You have the fact that 
Jesut* loved him. Beginning with these, you 
can work for souls with perpetually increasing 
ardor. 

If you are not speaking cant, what do you 
mean by bringing men to Christ? Surely this: 
that you annihilate the dividing space between 
them and Christ. And how can that be done 
so successfully ns making men feel that Christ 
loves them ? And how can you make me more 
surely feel that Christ loves me than by con- 
vincing me that some man loves me for Christ's 
sake? If men do not love me, men that are my 
fellows in frailty and in sorrow, how can the 
spotless Christ ? But if I find a man who would 
not love me if he had not first convinced him- 
self that Christ loved me, there opens a new and 
attractive world to me. 

Make a poor fisherman feel that there is for 
him a light in the window of the cottage on the 
cliff— a light kindled and nourished all the night 
long by a tender, loving hand — and you will 
nerve him to greater effort. He will strive for 
life heroically among the dark waves. But make 
him feel that if he come to land there will be no 
smile kindled, and if he sink in the seas there 



The Great Truth. 



77 



will be no tear shed, and why should he strive 
to make the shore ? 

Now what can elevate a man so much as to 
know that he is the object upon which is lav- 
ished the pure love of a pure and lofty heart ? 
A belief in the truth that Jesus knows me per- 
sonally by name, in all my characteristics, in all 
the circumstances and conditions of my life, and 
all my struggles and successes and failures, bet- 
ter than I know my son or my father, and knows 
all my faults, and that knowledge does not banish 
all affection from His heart, but that He loves 
me steadily, perpetually, warmly — how that must 
lift me ! Men may make mistakes in regard to 
me, and misunderstand me, and misrepresent 
me ; friends may fly from my adversities, like 
birds from winter; I may stand alone amidships 
in mid-sea, or in the heart of a city in which I 
am a total stranger ; no face may be glad at my 
coming, or gloomy at my going. But He loves 
me and has given Himself for me ! How He 
rejoices at my successes ! When I do what is 
right, how carefully He sees that my reward 
shall not be lost. O World, the Son of God 
loves me ! O Life, He loves me ! O Death, He 
loves me ! O Hell, He loves me ! What a glory 
is that, what an aureole round the head, what a 
crown on the brow ! 

Seeing that Christ loved each of us and gave 
Himself for each of us, what should follow as 
regards ourselves ? 

1. We should accept the love. That ought 
to seem a very strange statement; it ought to 
be utterly incomprehensible that any human 
being should reject a love so lofty, so honoring, 
so cheering, so elevating, so amazing. And yet 
there are thousands who make no more account 
of the love of Jesus than of the waste paper that 
blows through the streets; they act as though 
this were not among the sublime facts of God's 
biography, that Jesus loved them and gave Him- 
self for them. The very starting-point is to 
accept the gracious tender of the Lover of our 
souls, to believe that all His vows and protesta- 
tions of affection are sincere, are meant just as 
they are spoken, just as they sound to us ; that 
He is none of those who "keep the word of 
promise to the ear and break it to the hope." 
An acceptance of that affection goes far to kindle 
in us a love for our Saviour. 

2. We should appropriate that love. It is not 
enough to recognize it, to accept it, to agree that 
He does love the world and has given Himself 
for each man that is. My brother, if you would 
have the good of Christ's love and sacrifice, open 
your Bible, spread it before you, kneel down in 



reverent tenderness, open this Epistle to the 
Galatians as you would open a love-letter written 
by one dead, by that one who was your ideal of 
all loftiness, truth, and beauty : turn to the 
second chapter, to the twentieth verse; put 
your finger on the word " me." Read with your 
heart " He loved me." Press your finger closely 
on the "me" "He gave Himself for me. " 
let one generous tear fall on the "me," for 
what is meant by that "me" lay on the dear 
heart of Jesus when he was dying on the cross. 
"He loved ME, and gave Himself for ME." O 
do not let doubt cheat you of such love. Do 
not let it make you say, " Yes, He loved some 
one, gave Himself up for some one ; but not for 
me." Yes, it was for you. Paul says that he was 
the chief of sinners, and he was naturally a 
most ill-tempered, disagreeable, vicious person, 
and had committed all the more awful kinds of 
sins, and yet Christ had died for him. Now, no 
matter who you are that have strayed into the 
church on this day, however a sinner, having 
always felt that you had nothing to do with the 
solemn services of the Church, give up all such 
falsehoods, look at this Bible and say, " Who 
loved me;" and say and feel this blessed truth, 
"And gave Himself for me ;" and go home and 
go everywhere, saying, thinking, believing, 
feeling "He loved ME, and gave Himself for 
ME," and deepen and intensify the emphasis 
perpetually, and thus, more than any otherwise, 
you shall please Jesus, who can no otherwise be 
so honored as by your personal appropriation of 
His love. 

4. It seems logical to say, next, that we should 
reciprocate that love, but if an acceptance of 
love and an appropriation of love do not na- 
turally lead to a reciprocation of love, then no 
amount of reasoning or exhortation upon my 
part will lead you to love Jesus. 

5. But this certainly ought to stand as the 
proof of our reciprocation of Christ's love, that 
whereas He "gave Himself for us," we in like 
manner, and in our measure, give ourselves for 
Him. There was something to be done for us 
which called for the sacrifice of Himself, and 
He has established such an order of affairs in 
the world that there is something to be done for 
Him which demands the giving up of ourselves 
for Him. Such surrender, without love, if not 
utterly impracticable, would be a most horrible 
aggravation of all that is distressing in living ; 
but when the love precedes the sacrifice one 
marches to one's immolation as to a coronation. 

Such consecration, dear brethren, we need for 
our complete comfort. We must come to Paul's 



78 



The Great Truth. 



blessed experience, in which the life we live shall 
be a life of faith in the Son of God, when heaven 
and earth shall see that we no longer live for 
ourselves and to ourselves, but for Jesus and to 
Jesus. If such love and sacrifice upon His part 
made His whole existence, and has linked His 
name to everlasting honor in the hearts of men, 
let us be sure that no otherwise can we come to 
our chief spiritual good until our hearts not 
merely acknowledge, but imitate, that sacrifice. 
After our sacrifice of ourselves, how great a 
balance will be upon the side of Christ. It will 
not be so much that we have done this, but it 
will be horrible ingratitude if we fail of this. 

Finally, dear brethren, let your humanity be 
enlarged, exalted, and purified by the sublime 
exhibition of Christ's humanity. He loved the 
race — not the genial and pleasant alone, not the 
lofty and cultivated alone, not the attractive 
and the heavenly-minded alone, not admirers 
and friends, for He had none among mankind 
before He gave Himself for us ; but publicans 
and sinners, malefactors and harlots, hypocrites 
and murderers; the ugly, the base, the brutal, 
the infernal — loved through all wretched ob- 



structions of utter worthlessness, heartlessness, 
and unprincipled meanness — loved the jewel, 
man, that was in the swine's snout of filthiness 
and sin ; and knew that no otherwise could He 
save the man than by giving Himself for him. 
So must you believe. If you would do good to 
your race, you must love mankinds if you 
would make that love effectual, you must give 
yourself for the race. Christ's love was no weak, 
tearful sentimentalism : it was robust and en- 
during. He did not send humanity away from 
His door, saying, "Be clothed and fed;" but 
He hunted starvation out of its holes, and 
carried His blessings persistently to the evil and 
the thankless. He waded in the bloody mire of 
horrible battle-field to prove that His love was 
no empty word of fancy, but real — a powerful, 
a dominant principle, that was ready to do its 
great saving work with no thought of recom- 
pense or of applause. When you and I come to 
that state of heart we shall carry from our com- 
munion-table every month a fresh power to do 
good. Hear Jesus from the cross saying to you r 

"i have done this for thee: 
What wilt thou do for Me?" 



XIII. 

"I AM A KING: TO THIS END WAS I BORN, AND FOR THIS CAUSE CAME I INTO THE WORLD, 
THAT I SHOULD BEAR WITNESS [MARTYR] UNTO THE TRUTH. EVERY ONE THAT IS OF 
THE TRUTH HEARETH MY VOICE." — JOHN, XVIII. 37. 



It had come to be a thing determined by the 
Jews that Jesus should perish. The Romans 
had taken from them the power to inflict capital 
punishment. To murder Him would have been 
a coarse procedure, which, however, once or 
twice they were on the point of taking, in mo- 
ments of extreme exasperation. It would have 
been a confession of their weakness and of His 
power, of their wrong and His right. It was 
important both that He be put out of the way 
and that His taking off be regular and sanc- 
tioned by law, so that His cause be at the same 
time stigmatized. 

In bringing Him before Pilate, who was the 
representative of the Roman imperial power, 
the enemies of Jesus could make no headway 
by showing that He was a heretic according to 
their standard of orthodoxy, or even a blas- 
phemer according to their principles of religion. 
These would weigh nothing with a man who 
despised their orthodoxy and their religion, and 
was himself a Pagan, against whom, on those 
counts, a thousand-fold more could be brought 
than against Jesus. 

His ecclesiastical foes were compelled to find 
some allegation which should bring Him under 
the jurisdiction of the courts of law as a civil or 
political offender. The charge was treason ; the 
specification was opposition to Cassar ; the 
proof was in that Jesus made Himself a king. 

The malignity of this procedure is apparent 
when we consider that to raise an opposition to 
Caesar was the very thing His accusers had de- 
sired Him to do. Wily old ecclesiastical politi- 
cians as they were, they would not expose them- 
selves by any overt act which should bring down 
on them the tremendous power of the Roman 
Emperor. But in any movement which seemed 
to promise to lead to a conflict which might 
break the Roman yoke they took the greatest 
interest. They were always ready to foment a 
rebellion, provided some other person could be 
found to encounter the peril of leadership. 
So, when Jesus arose out of Galilee, that hot- 



bed of revolts, and when He began to acquire 
influence over the people, and when that influ- 
ence waxed stronger from time to time, and 
when He exhibited the extraordinary sagacity 
and remarkable self-control which are essential 
to leadership, they began to hope that this was 
he who should deliver Israel from their political 
subordination. They would have secretly urged 
all the common people to attach themselves to 
His person and His plans if He had only been 
willing to plot against the authority of Caesar. 
But, He did not. And, just because He would 
not, they hated Him and persecuted Him, and 
hunted Him to the death, maliciously and 
falsely charging Him with a crime they could 
not instigate Him to commit. 

Yet Jesus had allowed Himself to be called 
king, He had preached of a kingdom of heaven, 
of which He was understood to consider Him- 
self the Chief. To Caiaphas He had acknowl- 
edged Himself to be the Christ, who was ex- 
pected to be a king, and He added, " Hereafter 
shall the Son of Man sit on the right hand of 
the power of God." Then they all said, "Art 
thou then the Son of God?" He answered, 
" Ye say that I am," a formula indicating assent 
to the proposition. 

Having acknowledged Himself to be Christ 
in the presence of Caiaphas, He was ready to 
" witness a good confession before Pontius 
Pilate," as Paul says, and that confession was 
that He was a king. 

Before these confessions, when He was ap- 
proaching Jerusalem, the enthusiasm of the 
populace reached so great a height that they 
spread their garments in the way and saluted 
Him as "the King who cometh in the name of 
the Lord." He did not reject this honor. Pie 
did not correct this expression. He accepted it 
in a way natural to a king. 

This claim to regal authority and dignity on 
the part of Jesus, when He said " I am a king," 
was not a figurative expression : it was literal. 
Pilate so understood it : so did Caiaphas : sq 



80 



Jesus, our Martyr King. 



did the Sanhedrim : so did His disciples : so did 
the populace. Jesus knew that it was under- 
stood literally, and if He did not mean it liter- 
ally it is not to be reconciled with ordinary 
candor that He did not correct it. No average 
intellect can read the record now without taking 
it literally. His enemies never made the mis- 
take of confounding the ideas and of regarding 
a mere figure of rhetoric, intended to be no 
more than a figure of rhetoric, for the state- 
ment of literal fact, when no such literal fact 
was in the mind of the speaker. He was exe- 
cuted on the assumption that He claimed to be 
a king. 

Put the case on the ground of plain common 
sense, and let us see how it stands. Here is a 
man who has sufficient intellectual and moral 
power to become a leader of the people. Masses 
of men look up to him for instruction. Almost 
all are of mere average intellect, with the average 
culture of their nation. He teaches his doctrines 
in what is his mother-tongue and theirs. He 
declares himself a king. He receives homage 
as a king. He is charged with treason against 
the reigning emperor, because of his claims to 
be a king. He is charged with it and con- 
victed for it. He is led to execution, and on 
the way to the scaffold it is proclaimed along the 
streets that this is the crime for which he was to 
die. The accusation is nailed on the gallows, 
to be over his head when he was suffering the 
extreme penalty of the law. He knows all this. 
If any mistake have occurred he can correct it, 
up to the last minute. If he had a particle of 
honesty he would not have allowed it to grow. 
When he first saw that his disciples were taking 
the word literally he would have explained. If 
regal honors were paid him by an enthusiastic 
multitude as he was entering the capital of his 
country, he would have stopped the procession, 
and made them understand, or, if they per- 
sisted in misunderstanding, he would have left 
them and returned to the place from which he 
set out. If accused, in court civil or ecclesias- 
tical, he would have disclaimed all intent of 
being considered a king. He would have pro- 
tested against such literal taking of his words. 
If led to the death, he would have died proclaim- 
ing to the world that he was the victim of a mis- 
apprehension which his hearers had perversely 
refused to allow him to correct. If he had not 
done so he would have been a suicide. He 
would have committed self-destruction as a help- 
less fool or a stubborn knave, as one who having 
been once misapprehended, had not the sense 
to make himself properly understood, or, being 



tickled by the name of " king" without any regal 
prerogatives, had adhered to the empty title to 
his own destruction. 

Is there anything in all the recorded sayings 
and doings of Jesus to justify voting Him such 
a consummate fool ? If we decide that He was 
a knave, must we not be shut up to the conclu- 
sion that this dishonesty would have infected 
His whole life; that being willing to die for this 
empty claim to be king, He would have used 
the fervor of popular excitement, on the several 
occasions when it rose to a great height, for 
sinister personal purposes ? But He never did. 
His was a character of extraordinary wisdom and 
transparency. He was neither fool nor knave. 
But he claimed to be a king', and was executed 
for persevering in that claim. Then the words, 
" I AM A KING," are to be taken in their lit- 
eral significance. 

The mistake of the Jews was not in so taking 
them, but in misapprehending the nature of the 
kingdom over which Jesus claimed to be king ; 
and that misapprehension He was always quite 
careful to endeavor to correct, and it was, there- 
fore, a misapprehension in which the enemies of 
Jesus had no excuse for persevering. 

If I have seemed at pains, dear brethren, to 
make out this case, it is because there appears 
to me to be a tendency in our modes of thought 
and feeling and action to treat this claim of 
Jesus as a mere rhetorical figure, as meaning 
something quite vague, and not at all binding 
upon us or creating a claim to the loyalty of our 
whole existence to King Jesus. He is our liege 
Lord and rightful Sovereign, whose sovereignty 
is inalienable. He is " The King, Eternal, Im- 
mortal, Invisible ; the only wise God, and our 
Saviour." We may make the mistake which 
the Jews did, of misapprehending the nature of 
His kingdom ; or we may make a mistake which 
they avoided, namely, the taking as figurative 
what Jesus intended to have understood as 
literal. 

In His preaching Jesus very much dwelt upon 
what He sometimes called " the kingdom of the 
heavens," and sometimes "the kingdom of God." 
The view of His kingdom, as indicated by the 
latter phrase, we shall consider hereafter. In 
His mind there existed a realm of order and 
rule throughout the universe, inclusive of matter 
and spirit, great laws governing all, which stu- 
pendous system of law He administered. Im- 
measurably great, He could not fall into pride or 
into vanity; but His intense consciousness of 
His real position in the universe never forsook 
Him for a single instant, unless it may have 



Jesus, our Martyr King, 



81 



been in that season of dread horror which fell 
upon Him in death, when the " Eloi, Eloi, lama 
sabachthani" was extorted from Him. He felt 
that He could have hurled the stars from their 
spheres as easily as he could have called down 
legions of angels, and that He could do both by 
a mere volition. Paul photographs the view 
which Jesus had of Himself, when he says of 
Him, "By Him were all things created, that are 
in heaven and that are in earth, visible and in- 
visible, whether they be thrones or dominions, 
or principalities or powers : all things were 
created by Him and for Him, and He is before 
all things and by Him all things consist." 

In advance, if a man should employ the 
poetic faculty or the reasoning powers on this 
subject, he could scarcely fancy or conclude 
how the Eternal God, incarnating Himself, 
would behave among men. But, in either case, 
would there not be an approximation to the 
figure which Jesus made in human society? 
Helped by His history, we can now readily see 
that His was the very conduct which satisfies the 
fancy and the reason, considering the proposition 
of a self incarnating Deity. A man may deny 
that it is probable that God should become man 
in any sense, or by any conceivable processes ; 
but if a man admit that such a thing is among 
the possibilities, then would He not say that the 
history of Jesus, not merely the externals of 
His life, but more closely His consciousness, all 
His psychological conditions, as revealed in the 
gospels, are, so far as we can determine such a 
question by our present knowledge of the laws 
of thought, such as become the King of the 
Kingdom of the Heavens? 

But we must remember that human society 
lies in that vast realm, humanity as well as 
other thrones, and other dominions, and other 
principalities ; that humanity has its outside of 
sense and material connections, and its inside 
of sensibility and spiritual connections. Outside, 
it has need of hygienic regulations and civil 
government ; inside, of intellectual regulation 
and spiritual rule. One may be king or kaiser 
in the former and mere serf or slave in the 
latter. A man may exercise imperial authority 
and govern nations, maintaining peace, conduct- 
ing war, and promoting material prosperity, 
being himself in bondage to vile lusts and wild 
passions, or being merely the instrument in the 
hand of another, even as to-day Count Bismarck 
is Emperor of Germany and William of Prussia 
is his chief and most noble vassal. 

A man who intends to be a ruler among men 
may select his field. H % can scarcely rule in 



both departments. He cannot be Herod and 
John, Caesar and Paul, Constantine and Augus- 
tine, at one and the same time. Jesus chose to 
let the municipal and civil governments go for- 
ward. In His placr in humanity He would not 
touch them. As a man He would rule in the 
hearts and intellects of men by the truth. 

It was at this point that the error of the Jews 
arose. They could conceive no kingdom that 
did not have its capital, its throne and crown 
and sceptre and insignia and officers. Jesus 
had none of these. 

Inside the nations there is a nation. There 
is a type of intellect and of spirit which can be 
found in its antitype among all people, of all 
complexions, under all forms of civil govern- 
ment, and even in places and times of anarchy. 
Among all people there is a people who love 
truth and God, who can be quickened into 
greater love for truth and God. These are the 
people of Jesus — this is the kingdom of God 
among men. These people always bow to Jesus 
as soon as they know Him with instinctive re- 
cognition that He is their king. Whether they 
be barbarians or civilized, they seem to have a 
loyalty to Truth, and that is loyalty to Jesus. 
And when a man has been in rebellion against 
the truth, having a natural antagonism thereto, 
he never submits to truth until he submits to 
Jesus, and never submits to Jesus until he is 
ready to bow to the truth. 

In that kingdom Jesus is king, and does what- 
ever kings usually do. What the old Hebrew 
kings were accustomed to do among the ances- 
tors of the men who were slaying Jesus, and 
what at that very moment the Roman emperor 
was doing throughout the empire of which 
Judea was a very small and not very important 
portion, all these things Jesus did and Jesus 
does. Engaging Himself in the discharge of 
those functions, He left the kings of this world 
to manage for themselves as having finally to 
stand before His judgment-seat. 

He would not forbid His countrymen to make 
payment of the tax levied by Caesar. That is a 
most significant and indicative fact. To make 
any decision upon such a question would have 
shown a personal concern about Jewish inde- 
pendence or Roman rule. He had none. He 
did not care to perpetuate the rule of the em- 
peror. He did not care to break the Roman 
yoke. He had no care for Jewish independence. 
What were all these to Him ? Dynasties are 
temporary: His kingdom was to exist as long 
as humanity had place on earth. Local and 
temporary politics He left to politicians and 



82 



Jesus, our Martyr King. 



office-seekers, the men who belonged to an age. 
But He belongs to all ages. He maintained the 
supremacy of His kingdom and took tribute 
from the world, and now takes tribute from the 
world, whether they be of His spiritual kingdom 
or outlying tributaries, but for His purposes as 
a king. The priest, the Levite, the scribe, the 
peasant, all that the Israelites had left of all that 
their fathers had transmitted, Jesus levied on. 
He made all the culture of the Greek and all 
the power of the Roman to conjoin in the ser- 
vice of His spiritual kingdom, whether they 
would or not. And as His kingdom has come 
down the ages, He exhibits His supremacy by 
thus taxing the nations. The toilers of the Mind 
are made to lay the tribute of their best thoughts 
at His feet. The kings of Tarshish and of the 
isles bring presents ; the kings of Sheba and 
Seba offer gifts. Science, art, literature, com- 
merce, — brain-kings and money-kings and mer- 
chant-princes, — have imitated the Magi who 
brought to the new-born Jesus gold as to a 
king, myrrh as to a prophet, and frankincense 
as to a priest. 

He not only gathers His tribute from those of 
His kingdom and from all the world, in some 
sense, but He acts as Supreme Judge, as the 
old Hebrew kings did, and as in some sense all 
kings do. His will is supreme law. It comes 
to be so in accordance with the nature of things. 
He rules in heads and hearts. Love is His 
power. Truth is Himself. What those who 
love Him know will most please Him that they 
do; even as He himself said, "If ye love me, 
keep my commandments." They know the 
truth. The truth makes them free to serve 
Jesus. There is no law, no enactment of legis- 
lative body, no edict of imperial authority, no 
expression of connection between cause and 
effect in nature, that lays its hand with such 
resistless force on men as the law of love. Love 
is the only loyalty. You cannot make men loyal 
to any government by test-oaths. What empti- 
ness is a woman's promise to "obey" her husband 
if she make it only in the formality of nuptial 
rites ! If a man do not love his king, if a woman 
do not love her lord, there is no power of the law 
that can reach deeper than the body and lay its 
grasp on what is finer than the outward person, 
and what makes the person fine, namely, the 
spirit. 

Jesus lays His law on the heart. It is the law 
of love. He does rot tell you how often you 
are to fast and pray and visit the sick and the 
poor, nor how much of your time and money 
you are to devote to promoting His cause. Love 



must teach you that. He teaches you love. 
Love has no statute of details. You do not in- 
quire how long you must sit beside a dying 
mother, nor how often you must visit the woman 
whom you most adore, from the latter you 
would never stay away, from the former you 
would never go away. You are never absent 
except under compulsion, and you make no cal- 
culation of time and no account of money spent 
for the best beloved. 

Jesus is such a royal lawgiver. He is the 
Supreme Lawgiver, because He plants His laws 
in the heads and hearts of His subjects. What- 
ever He forbids is wrong, whatever He com- 
mands is right ; all other things are indifferent. 
It is because He is the Truth that He has this 
power. 

Again, He is like the old Hebrew kings, and 
like all other kings, in that He is Commander- 
in-chief, Leader of the forces, Jehovah of Saba- 
oth, as the old Hebrew bards and prophets called 
Him, that is, Divine Generalissimo, Lord of 
hosts. He rules the physical universe for the use 
of His spiritual kingdom. He overrules the in- 
tellectual operations in the universe for the use 
of His spiritual kingdom. All the seekers after 
truth rally to Jesus. Since He lived and died 
He has become the centre of attraction for them 
all. " Every one that is of the truth heareth 
His voice." Men have suspected that they did 
not follow Jesus when they believed that they 
were following the truth ; but afterward they 
found either that what they followed was not the 
truth and so they forsook it, or that they had 
been unwittingly following Jesus and then they 
adored Him. When head is to be made against 
any error or wrong, Jesus is in the lead of the 
forces. He is chief martyr, that is, witness, 
unto the truth. He goes to the forefront. He 
dares and bears and does everything for the 
truth. And more and more, as the conflict of 
the ages goes forward, do the souls of truth-lovers 
close up about Jesus as their Chief. 

So, in these three particulars, of exacting the 
tribute, of making the laws, and of command- 
ing the forces of the kingdom of God, is Jesus 
king. 

We always weaken His claim when we put it 
upon any secular ground. He was careful to 
insist that His kingdom was " not of this world," 
that while it was in the world it was not of the 
world, that while it was in the ages it was not of 
the ages, as the word "secular" means, that 
which belongs to measurable time. His king- 
dom belongs to the measureless eternity. A 
secular kingdom must change, because national 



Jesus, our Martyr King. 



83 



conditions change with the ages. An ageless 
kingdom, separate and distinct from changing 
conditions, has to do' with spiritual things and 
they are eternal. His kingdom, being among 
and within all the kingdoms of the world, does 
modify them, but is not modified by them. It 
can exist quite as well under one form of secular 
rule as another, a despotism, a constitutional 
monarchy, a republic, or an anarchy. They 
will pass away. No form of government yet 
devised by man has been permanent. All 
change. But the kingdom of truth, in which 
Jesus is sovereign, does not change. While, 
like earthly kings in the particulars I have 
specified above, He is unlike them in the follow- 
ing particulars : 

1. He did not reach His throne as other kings 
reached theirs. Their rule was obtained by in- 
heritance, or election, or conquest. In none of 
these ways did Jesus become king. These are 
secular ways. They all imply time, and the 
succession of times, ages. He never knew a 
time when He was not king, so long as there 
have been beings to own the rule of truth and 
love. As soon as the first creature who could 
think and feel came into existence he found 
Jesus already king. It is because He is LOVE 
and because He is The Truth, and because He 
can never be anything else and has never been 
anything else, that, in the nature of things He 
must reign until all enemies are put under His 
feet. There never was a spiritual king before 
Him, there is no other with Him, there never 
will be another after Him. He cannot vacate 
His kingship. No king, no Jesus: if Jesus, 
then king. 

2. He does not maintain His rule and author- 
ity as the secular potentates do. With them it 
is force, fraud or physical diplomacy, or the 
sword. It must be made to appear to be the 
secular interests of other parties to abstain from 
interfering with those in power or else rulers fall 
and kings are overthrown. It is so under every 
form of government. They who can most deceive 
and most intimidate are the " ins." The " outs" 
are striving by superior deception and intimida- 
tion to oust them. Conservatism is the product 
of fear. It is a precept among worldly princes 
and politicians, Qui nescit dissimulare, nescit 
regnare, He who does not know how to dissem- 
ble does not know how to reign. Hence state 
secrets, and the silence of cabinets. 

When lying fails, fighting begins. Therefore 
Jesus said, " My kingdom is not of this world 
[that is, is not secular] ; if my kingdom were of 
this world then would my servants fight, that I 



should not be delivered to the Jews ; but now is 
my kingdom not from hence." How little did 
Pilate appreciate that reply with all its profound 
meanings ! If Christ's kingdom had been se- 
cular that night would Caiaphas have been stoned 
and Pilate crucified. Jesus had gained such 
power over the populace, that He could have led 
them into Jerusalem and suddenly overpowered 
priest and procurator. Even when standing 
before Pilate He could have spoken a few words 
with Peter, whose old courage would have flamed 
again, and who would have stirred up the im- 
mense crowd of Galileans at that time thronging 
Jerusalem, and they would have poured in on 
Temple and Praetorium, and broken through all 
ranks to snatch Jesus from His foes and crown 
Him on Zion's holy hill the successor of David, 
the King of Israel. 

Even poor Judas, who, I suspect was "the 
other disciple" present with Peter, a man to 
whom every scoundrel thinks himself superior, 
poor Judas, who was not a good man, who was 
a very bad man and did a most horrid thing, but 
who was not quite so bad as some baptized and 
unhanged Christians who betray their Lord and 
do not let it break their hearts, — even Judas 
would have heen glad to join the revolution and 
throttle the hypocritical high-priest who had 
tempted him to commit a crime against love, 
and thus in some measure redeem himself. 
God only knows how long and wearily the poor 
wretch bore his heart-break outside, after he 
departed upon hearing these words of Jesus. 

Alas, poor Judas, he was a secularist ! He 
believed in making Jesus king and keeping 
Jesus king by fraud on his part and force on the 
part of Jesus. Perhaps he was faithful to his 
convictions. Perhaps he sincerely held the polit- 
ical maxim that the end justifies the means. He 
had enacted his part of fraud. Would Jesus 
now enact His part of force, and had the hour 
come for the Epiphany of the kingdom of Is- 
rael? Jesus killed him when He said, " My 
kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom 
were of this world, then would my servants 
fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews." 
If no secular kingdom, then no kingdom for 
Judas ; and he went out and died. 

How many a man still desires to have Jesus a 
secular king. It is this longing which filled and 
killed Judas and still prevails among men which 
give designing priests and political parsons 
their power. It is this desire to secularize the 
kingdom of Jesus that has made inquisitions 
and racks and tortures and civil and social pains 
and disabilities for opinion's sake. Jesus forbids 



Jesus our Martyr King. 



it all. It is all secular. He will count nothing 
a gain to His kingdom which can perish with 
the ages. 

3. And so, the nature, objects, and tendency 
of the kingdom of Christ are not of this world, 
and this distinguishes His from the kingdoms of 
secular rulers. Their means are worldly, such 
as will not exist when this world goes out of 
existence. Jesus has only Truth. Their king- 
doms are adjusted to affairs temporal, His to 
affairs eternal. All they propose to gain is what 
is limited by the conditions of a necessarily brief 
life: if it were not paradoxical we might say 
that the ends of Jesus are endless. "His king- 
dom is an everlasting kingdom." The kingdoms 
of this world touch the outside, His the inside 
of men. The grave can swallow theirs. The 
grave enlarges His. His kingdom is to others 
what space is to objects. 

The aspect in which He presented His royalty 
to Pilate is most striking and impressive. To 
be a martyr to the truth He represented as the 
highest possible thing, and the special truth to 
which He was to bear witness is His kingship. 
For this purpose He was incarnated. Before 
His birth through the Blessed Virgin He con- 
sidered it, and deemed it an end befitting Him. 
He was and is king. But the world must know 
it. They could not know it if He kept Himself 
eternally apart from the race. Men that are 
superior must demonstrate their superiority in 
some way. The highest man ought to be 
king, according to . right reason. As much 
truth as a man has so much power has he. 
Jesus had all the truth in the universe. His 
supreme royalty lay in His having it all. His 
kingly functions are only in accordance with 
truth. The grandest thing a man can do is to 
be a martyr for the truth. Jesus came to live 
such a life and to submit it, in comparison with 
all other lives, to the inspection of the race. 

Now, brethren, who shall be our king? Let 
us go out among the sons of men and take our 
oil of consecration, and let them pass in great 
procession and array before us, that we may 
choose our king. Shall it be Adam, or Noah, 
or Moses, or Solomon, or Alexander, or Plato, 
or Socrates, or Caesar, or Charlemagne, or Na- 
poleon ? See how these stand, head and shoul- 
ders above surrounding men ! What loftiness, 
what breadth, what grandeur ! What strength 



in each right arm, what speculation in each eye, 
what command on each brow, what leadership in 
each man ! Which shall be king? 

But, see. He comes. Up from the loneli- 
ness of Judea, out from a Jewish peasant girl's 
arms, out of a mechanic's shop, there comes a 
man statelier than the most monarchic ruler, 
solemn as eternity, clear as the mid-day, deep as 
the heavens, purer than infancy, sweeter than 
womanhood, older than Adam, more solitary 
than Noah, grander than Moses, wiser than 
Solomon, more splendid than Alexander, 
broader than Plato, acuter than Socrates, more 
imperial than Julius, greater than Charlemagne, 
more glorious than Napoleon. He is very 
truth. He knows all that is in man and all 
that is in God, because He is God and is Man. 
His wisdom will never be at fault, His goodness 
is unfailing, His power is unconquerable. He 
is each man's most devoted friend. By Him all 
other Kings reign, and He shall reign, when all 
earthly might and dominion and power shall be 
in the dust. Let us crown Him ! Bring forth 
the royal diadem ! Bring crowns and coronets 
and garlands and wreaths ! Pour out the 
anointing oil on that lofty head of strength and 
beauty. He has been grandest Martyr to all 
grandest truths. He must be King, Emperor, 
whatsoever designates supremacy. The order 
of the universe, the demands of truth, the exi- 
gencies of humanity require it. Henceforth 
can no man tear that crown away. It adheres 
to Jesus. He shall wear it forever. Forever 
can He appeal to the utter kingliness of His 
nature, which is incapable of degradation or 
deposition. Forever can He appeal to the fact 
that "to' this end He had been born, and for 
this cause had He come into the world that He 
should bear witness to the truth." And that 
martyrdom is so splendid that there is no point 
of space so remote from the earth and no point 
of eternity so remote from His earthly history 
that it shall not be made brilliant by the glory 
of the sacrifice of our Martyr King. 

Let us remember, for the practical guidance of 
our lives, that men's tests of loyalty are nothing 
or worse than nothing. There is only one 
to whom we must be loyal, and in any act or 
fact or word, or thought, a plan or purpose of 
life, faithlessness to Jesus is the highest treason 
in the universe. 



XIV. 

I MUST PREACH THE KINGDOM OF GOD." — LUKE-, IV. 43. 



Last Sunday we considered Jesus as a Wit- 
nessing King, and had occasion to speak of the 
manner in which He represented His kingdom. 
To-day we return to the consideration of that 
kingdom in some other aspects. 

There are two phrases which have become 
familiar to Bible readers, the "kingdom of 
heaven," literally "of the heavens," and the 
"kingdom of God." The latter occurs four 
times as often in the New Testament as the 
former. So far as I can discover, the former 
occurs only in Matthew, the latter in each of the 
Evangelists, in the Acts, and in five of Paul's 
Letters. 

I would not assert dogmatically that the sa- 
cred writers maintained a distinction in their 
own minds between these phrases, or that Jesus 
used them otherwise than as generally synony- 
mous ; but the Holy Scripture was written for 
all ages, all minds, all culture. To us there 
occurs a possible distinction, and what is pos- 
sible to us was possible to Matthew and John 
and Paul, — was possible to the mind of Jesus. 

" The kingdom of the heavens" conveys to 
my mind a description of the kingdom of God 
extensively, and " the kingdom of God" conveys 
the idea of the kingdom of the heavens inten- 
sively. "The kingdom of the heavens" was in 
existence first, then "the kingdom of God." 
The former may exist without sentient and 
responsible creatures, wherever matter and 
forces exist ; but the latter requires for its exist- 
ence not simply unresisting matter, but perceiving 
mind and feeling soul, something capable of 
loyalty. Did not Paul mean as much when he 
said, "that was not first which is spiritual, but 
that which is natural ?" 

So, if a distinction were to be made, I should 
say that "the kingdom of the heavens" repre- 
sented the rule of Jesus over the whole universe 
of matter and spirit, and " the kingdom of God" 
His special rule in the hearts of men, a rule they 
themselves come to perceive and acknowledge, 
the principles of which they can understand and 
apply to their own governance and upbuilding. 
The coming of Jesus into the world was to make 
the princples of this spiritual kingdom better 



understood : assisting reason by the revelation 
of fact, and illustrating the meaning of spiritual 
laws by repeated applications in the presence of 
men. 

The spirtual majesty of Jesus, if He be king 
of this kingdom, would make itself felt as He 
came. And so, in point of fact, it did. The 
minds of the nations were in a peculiar state. 
Something was coming. The air of the busy 
courts of kings and of the sequestered closets 
of students was full of premonition of some 
great spiritual Advent or Immanation. As Mil- 
ton says : 

u No war, or battle's sound, 
Was heard the world around, 

The idle spear and shield were high up hung j 
The hooked chariot stood 
Unstained with hostile blood ; 

The trumpet spake not to the armdd throng ; 
And kings sat still with awful eye, 
As if they surely knew their Sovereign Lord was by." 

Suddenly, in the wilderness of Judea, there 
uprose a sound that thrilled the people. It was 
the voice of the herald of the king. It was the 
voice of John, crying, " Repent, repent, repent, 
for the kingdom of the heavens is at hand." 
Then, in a most special manner was this king- 
dom to become intensified in the souls of men. 
Then, when John had cried his cry, and his 
voice was hushed, uprose Jesus the king, and 
began in Galilee to preach, that is, to herald, 
the kingdom of which He is king. 

On the occasion the history of which contains 
the text, He was going from Capernaum, and the 
people were beseeching Him to stay. He ex- 
claimed, "I must preach the kingdom of God 
to the other cities." As last Sunday we con- 
sidered the good confession which He made 
before Pontius Pilate, at the close of His public 
life declaring Himself to be king, let us study 
this assertion of the beginning of His ministry, 
that we may, if possible, know more and feel 
more of His blessed rule in our hearts. Each 
man's voluntary submission of his soul in the 
freedom of His will to the government of God. 
making it as submissive to God's law for souls 



86 



The Kingdom of God. 



as matter is to God's law for matter, that is 
mail's duty : the fact that this submission brings 
to the soul its greatest possible good, as all the 
good that can be brought out of matter is 
brought by submitting it to God's physical laws, 
that is God's gospel. Preaching the kingdom 
of the heavens, preaching the kingdom of God, 
preaching the gospel, are interchangeable ex- 
pressions. 

To learn more of Christ's ideas of the king- 
dom of God, let us regard His own sayings 
touching this subject. You must have noticed 
that Jesus was fond of using similitudes to repre- 
sent this spiritual kingdom. Let us recall a 
few. 

In the fourth chapter of Mark we have this : 
" And He said, so is the kingdom of God, as if 
a man should cast seed into the ground, and 
should sleep, and rise night and day; and the 
seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not 
how. For the earth bringeth forth fruit of her- 
self ; first the blade, then the ear, after that the 
full corn in the ear. But when the fruit is 
brought forth, immediately he putteth in the 
sickle, because the harvest has come." 

Now, the first thing that strikes my mind here 
is the presentation of the principle of unity in 
the whole government of God, so that there is 
not one kingdom of nature and another king- 
dom of grace, but the physical, the intellec- 
tual, and the spiritual, are all departments of 
one kingdom, and that the processes in each are 
carried forward by modes common to all. I 
desire you, my brethren, to familiarize your 
minds with that principle, so that your religion 
may be natural and your natures religious. In 
nature there is the ground and there is the 
seed. The farmer's agency is to bring them 
together. He can do that. He can do no 
more. He may then wake or sleep, go about 
his pleasures or about other business. The 
seed will grow. The earth bringeth forth fruit 
of itself, automatically, as it is in the original, 
self-moved. The allusion is to the energy of 
nature which seizes the live germ and pushes 
it into growth. 

The kingdom of God is such. In man's spirit 
is this same kind of energy to do for a seed-truth 
what the earth does for a seed-grain. Just so is 
this kingdom of God propagated. The adher- 
ents of that king who came into the world to 
bear witness to the truth, must themselves always 
believe that nothing but truth is to be planted, 
but that when once it is planted in the human 
soul it will grow. They can do nothing for that 
kingdom but plant the truth. The Holy Spirit 



is the sunshine, supplying the light, the heat, 
and the electricity. No man understands the 
mode by which vegetable processes are carried 
forward ; all he can know is the processes them- 
selves. So no man can understand how a truth 
in a human soul grows ; but it does grow, and 
can be propagated from soul to soul. So must 
spread that kingdom of God which consists in 
men's knowing and submitting to the rule of the 
Lord. 

It is to be noticed that whether this kingdom 
be in the individual or in the world it is pro- 
gressive. The heavenly Ruler did not plant it full- 
grown in the world at once, but put it down as 
a seed, and it springs into first the blade, then 
the ear, and finally the full corn in the ear. 
That is the well-known history in the case of 
individuals. We are not to ostracize a man and 
count him no citizen of the kingdom of heaven 
because he is not the full ripe corn in the ear, is 
only the ear, or is only a blade, and as yet fruit- 
less. He must be that at first. We must be 
patient husbandmen, and wait for the complete 
ripening. 

Again : Jesus said, " Whereunto shall we 
liken the kingdom of God? or, with what com- 
parison shall we compare it ? It is like a grain 
of mustard-seed, which, when it is sown in the 
earth, is less than all the seeds that be in the 
earth ; but when it is sown, it groweth up, and 
becometh greater than all herbs, and shooteth 
out great branches, so that the fowls of the air 
may lodge under the shadow of it." 

Here again is a similitude found in vegetable 
life, and differs from the other in that it points 
to the vast contrast between the apparent small- 
ness of the principles of the kingdom of God 
and the immense results when those principles 
are imbedded in the human soul. And how- 
true we know that to be. Take any human soul 
with average soul-energy, and take any distinct- 
ive principle of the kingdom of God, and in the 
one plant the other, and see how that least 
truth and seemingly smallest principle grows 
and enlarges and spreads itself. In the ab- 
stract it did not appear to be much, but incor- 
porated with a human life it grows immensely. 

For instance, let a man receive the element- 
ary principle of unselfishness. This is one of 
the principles of the kingdom of the heavens as 
shown in the physical universe, in that every- 
thing is created for everything else and exists 
not for itself. The light is not for itself. Flow- 
ers are not for themselves. The orbs are not for 
themselves. Not one of these perceives its own 
beauty, its own aroma, or its own weight. So 



The Kingdom of God. 



87 



in the kingdom of God. God might have lived 
for Himself. But He laid this among the funda- 
mentals: nothing must exist for itself, but for 
others : I will not exist for myself, but for oth- 
ers. He is now living for others constantly. He 
wrought that principle into every atom of mat- 
ter. He infixed it in all the physical forces. 
He adopted it for his own rule of working. It 
is a principle of His kingdom in the hearts of 
men. Let any man take that into his heart of 
hearts, and see ! what a workman he becomes ! 
and see ! what a gentleman he becomesj His 
whole life spreads. For father and mother, for 
brother and sister, for wife and child, for friend 
and stranger, he works all his faculties and 
gives all his means and time. 

The principle in the abstract seems quite 
small, but when God begins to work on it, He 
seems more God than even before. He does 
not rest centred on His infinite godhead in un- 
broken repose of utter selfishness. He lives for 
others, like a king whose every subject may 
claim him for servant in most important things. 
Angels are not for themselves, but are minister- 
ing spirits. The thought, the principle, is a 
mustard-seed. Growing up in the heart of man 
or angel or God it shoots out its branches and 
waves its glories through all the heavens. 

Again: Jesus said, " Whereunto shall I liken 
the kingdom of God? It is like leaven, which a 
woman took and hid in three measures of meal, 
till the whole was leavened." 

I cannot refrain, in passing, from calling the 
attention of those who have rigid ideas of what 
they call " the dignity of the pulpit," by which 
we discover that they mean solemn stupidity 
when speaking of spiritual things, a stupidity 
that never stoops to take an illustration from the 
kitchen as Jesus did, which must never say any- 
thing that attracts the least attention, a dignity 
of which the Lord had none, — I cannot refrain 
from calling the attention of such people to 
the natural dignity of Jesus, which could not be 
injured by finding a simile of the kingdom of 
God in a dough-trough. 

The meal is the human spiritual nature. The 
leaven is the principles of the kingdom of God. 
Without the human spiritual nature those prin- 
ciples remain mere abstractions. Without those 
principles the soul remains unchanged, unfit for 
spiritual use. They must come together. What 
then ensues ? The leaven attacks the meal : 
there is the aggressiveness of the principles of 
the kingdom of God. The leaven changes all 
the meal into leaven : there is the transforming 



energy of the principles of the kingdom of God. 
"Till the whole was leavened." Meal cannot 
change yeast into meal, but yeast can change 
meal into yeast. There is nothing in human 
intellect or spiritual energy to overcome the 
principles of the kingdom of God ; therein is 
the royalty of that rule exhibited. But that 
kingdom can so change and transform the whole 
spiritual nature of man that you cannot find a 
single inch of unconquered territory, not an in- 
tellection, not an emotion, not a volition that 
rises in rebellion against the rule of right. Let 
the standard of Jesus be allowed to be planted 
in any part of any man's nature, and our great 
king will take the whole, so incessantly vigorous 
and active, like leaven, is the kingdom of God. 

In these three parabolic representations Jesus 
shows us several characteristics of the kingdom 
of God, all of which we may perceive also in the 
kingdom of the heavens. 

First : There is the smallness of the begin- 
nings. Nothing that God does is large at first. 
All this picturing of God's rolling a flood of 
worlds into space is merest poetry or pulpit 
rhetoric. All God's great trees were once little 
seed. He never spake a whole Paradise into 
existence at once, so far as we know. Look at 
the smallness of the beginnings and the slowness 
of the movements, as Geology and Genesis unite 
in teaching us. One by one God made things. 
It was a long, long labor, related with minute- 
ness by Moses through a whole chapter. Then, 
when the earth had become capable of causing 
seed to germinate, "the Lord God made every 
plant of the field before it was in the earth, and 
every herb of the field before it grew." "And the 
Lord God planted a garden." " And out of the 
ground made the Lord God to grow every tree." 
Omnipotence, that can do instantaneously, sub- 
mits itself to the law of small beginnings. 

The next characteristic is the spontaneousness 
of growth. Bring together the two correlatives, 
and growth begins. Put seed and earth together, 
put leaven and meal together, put truth and in- 
tellect together. The farmer needs waste no 
time on trying to make the seed grow; it will 
grow, and he cannot make it grow. The cook 
needs waste no time in trying to make the yeast 
change the whole meal-ball into yeast. He can- 
not make it do so, but it will do so, of itself. 
The teacher need have no labor in striving to 
make the principles of the kingdom of God 
transform human souls. He cannot make it do 
so, but it will do so. All the farmer has to do 
is to put the seed in the earth. All the cook has 



88 



The Kingdom of God. 



to do is to mix the yeast with the dough. All 
the teacher has to do is to bring the mind in 
contact with the truth. Infixed in each thing at 
creation was this spontaneousness of growing 
when its correlative was found. This ought to 
be a great comfort to all parents, Sunday-school 
teachers, preachers, and other laborers for the 
truth. 

The third characteristic is the regularity of 
growth. The progress of the kingdom of God, 
either in the individual soul or in the world, is by 
law and not by fits and starts. We cannot plant 
the seed without earth, we cannot have the blade 
without the seed, we cannot have the ear with- 
out the blade, we cannot have the corn without 
the ear, we cannot have the meal without the 
corn, we cannot have the bread without the 
meal. Such is the kingdom of God. Those 
who believe that such a kingdom exists can 
afford to be patient, to labor in quiet assurance, 
suspending their operations on the adamantine 
chain of a law which tenderly holds an infant's 
heart at its first pulsation, which dominantly 
permeates the smallest discoverable microscopic 
sperm, and which untremulously sustains the 
most ponderous orbs in the universe. 

If the certainty of growth be not contained 
in the two characteristics last mentioned, the 
Saviour teaches that, too, in regard to this 
kingdom of God which He said He " must 
preach." It will grow. It may be ages or cycles 
before we can see that it has grown ; but it is 
silently growing like seed, it is noiselessly work- 
ing like leaven. But it is growing and it is work- 
ing, — of that we may be sure. The processes 
which are necessary for the bloom on the cen- 
tury-plant may be a hundred years in going 
forward toward their end, and we do not perceive 
them ; but suddenly the bloom betrays the pro- 
cess. Now and then, in the long roll of the ages, 
we perceive that the kingdom of God has gone 
forward, although the peoples of the centuries 
did not perceive that it was going forward, and 
many of them much doubted whether it would 
go forward any more. Men, sow seed. Then 
they sleep. They wake and see no sign. They 
watch it daily and see nothing. But by-and-by 
the field has changed from gray dull earth hues to 
freshest green, then deepened into emerald, then 
risen into the goldenness of grain ; and although 
we could not at any moment have said, "It is 
growing," we may now confidently say, "It has 
grown." So also is the kingdom of God. His 
rule is spreading through the universe of mind 
and sentient nature: we know that by seeing 
from time to time that it has spread. 



Another characteristic is that it wins its way 
among men not by overpowering and subduing, 
but by transforming. The principle of the king- 
dom of the heavens is that earth and seed together 
shall become plant, but neither the seed nor the 
earth is pushed out of existence by the plant. 
They are transformed into the plant and reassert 
their presence in the bloom. The leaven does 
not throw the meal away and take its place. It 
leavens the meal to its last atom, and the bakea- 
ble dough comes. So when this kingdom shall 
have come to its final perfection, it will have 
transformed alien and rebel substances into co- 
workers for the spread of the principles of the 
kingdom. That which seems helplessly inert 
shall be quickened into activity for the right. 

And lastly, final perfection is taught by the 
Divine Teacher, who is Himself the King in 
this kingdom. The full corn in the ear, the 
perfected tree, the whole mass leavened, — how 
these figures correspond with the predictions of 
the completeness of the kingdom of God in 
which Jesus shal] reign until He hath put all 
enemies under His feet, when every knee shall 
bow and every tongue shall confess. No king 
has perfect rule while a single town holds out in 
rebellion. The spiritual kingdom of God is not 
perfect while any portion of the spiritual universe 
is in revolt. The world of soul is the meal. The 
kingdom of God is the leaven. With geometric 
proportion of increase shall be the power and 
speed with which !t shall leaven and leaven and 
leaven, " till the whole is leavened." 

Subjects of the rule of Jesus in " the kingdom 
of the heavens," as we must be, we should seek, 
my dear brethren, to be happy subjects of the 
spiritual "kingdom of God," as we may be. 
For that great enjoyment no directions can be 
so important to us as those of the king Himself. 

In his conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus said, 
" Except a man be born again, he cannot see 
the kingdom of God." The word translated 
" again," means " from the beginning," or "from 
above," intimating that the change is to be 
thorough and spiritual. Let us briefly consider 
this case. Nicodemus was an old man, an offi- 
cial person, a scholar. His studies and his 
political relationship had led him through all 
the years of his life to hope for the uprising of 
some one who should set up again the kingdom 
of Israel. Jesus had made some demonstrations 
which Nicodemus hoped might lead to such 
result, yet he so feared that Jesus might follow 
in the wake of other failures that he sought an 
interview by night. 

Jesus read his heart at a glance, and without 



The Kingdom, of God. 



89 



making ceremonious reply to the courteous in- 
troduction of Nicodemus, He addressed these 
words to him at once. They teach us that hearts 
which have become selfish, that minds which 
have become secularized, that lives which have 
become worldly, must be radically and totally 
changed before a man can perceive the relation- 
ships of the kingdom of God and enjoy this high 
citizenship. 

It also taught him that these changes are not 
the mere adjustment of one's self to a new order 
of things, such as a man must make when one 
government succeeds another at the close of a war, 
but that it is a spiritual as well as a total change 
of the nature and life, as when a man who has 
hated a dynasty and devoted his brains to plot- 
ting against it and his life to its overthrow, sud- 
denly perceives and feels all the wrong of his 
course and really and inwardly conceives a love 
for his king which is so strong, that whereas he 
had perilled all for the overthrow of the monarch, 
he is now ready to devote all for his sovereign, 
with no selfish intent or purpose, but through 
pure love. 

This is not merely a change of views, seeing 
things differently ; it is a real change of charac- 
ter. A good man may commit technical treason 
through misapprehension of the rightfulness of 
the reigning sovereign, and still he may be a 
good man. He would have only to change his 
views. But a bad man becomes a traitor through 
his badness of heart. He loves wrong, and there- 
fore hates his rightful king. That man needs 
a change so thorough, so utter, so total, as that 
it may well be called being "born again." 
This phrase was common among the Jews to 
express a change of religion from Paganism to 
Judaism, in which all the stains of the former 
were to be washed off, as indicated by baptism. 

Now, dear brethren, except a man have this 
spiritual change, he can not perceive the spirit- 
ual kingdom, nor enjoy it. Having eyes, he sees 
not. He has spiritual faculties which do not 
perform spiritual functions. If one were born 
with eyes and ears and nose and tongue and 
hands, but none of these connected with the 
brain, and should live a score of years, his life 
being sustained by mere eating, which gave no 
pleasure, and suddenly the use of all these 
senses should come to him, heaven and earth, 
with all their pomp and splendor and beauty 
bursting in through his eyes, and musical notes 
and human articulations and the gusty sounds 
of a windy day rushing in at his ears, and all 
the aroma of the garden of Gul, floating to his 
nostrils, and all the exquisiteness of delicate 



viands addressing his palate, — why, all this would 
be another birth, and a greater birth than the 
former. So when a man's spiritual faculties are 
quickened, all the kingdom of God seems so 
new and glorious that he becomes conscious that 
he has been born again. 

Moreover, Jesus said, " Whosoever shall not 
receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he 
shall not enter therein." What pure enjoyment 
children have of all the pleasures of life ! How 
undoubting and truthful they are ! "Of such is 
the kingdom of God." " Of such is the king- 
dom of the heavens." The former is Mark's, 
the latter is Matthew's report of a saying of 
our Lord in connection with that first quoted. 
Simplicity and childlikeness are necessary. 
The more self-conceited we are the less are we 
willing to be taught of the Spirit of God. 

O, my brethren, is our wisdom always wise ? 
Do not some who increase knowledge increase 
sorrow ? Do not our windows exclude the 
blessed sunlight? Is it not bad when a man 
must leave his fresh, sweet, trustful childhood 
quite behind him and become hard toward men 
and harder toward God? Is it not a bitter 
thing that your pastors must make arguments to 
prove that you ought to do such and such 
things, when love should prompt you ? 
"Eddie," says John, "you must take this 
letter to the post-office before two o'clock !" 
" Why ?" asks Eddie. "Because," replies his 
brother, " Pa says so." " Well," says the duti- 
ful son, and is careful to do it because he knows 
that his father would not have selected him, nor 
the particular errand, nor the particular time, 
but for reasons quite satisfactory to the father ; 
and the son goes quite cheerfully and unques- 
tioningly to do what his father desires ; and his 
brother has no occasion to make an argument. 

O, dear brethren, should not that be so with 
us ? If we love Him, our great and dear king, 
who is also our spiritual Father, shall we not 
keep His commandments, without being en- 
forced thereto ? In the physical world, which is 
the inferior portion of the kingdom of the 
heavens, we are held by the strong hand of the 
physical law ; but in the spiritual world, which 
is the superior portion of the kingdom of the 
heavens, we are held by love. The kingdom of 
the heavens, in the physical world, comes to us 
in our childhood. " Heaven lies about us in our 
infancy." In our manhood we go into the 
kingdom of God as simply trusting to the be- 
nificence and steadfastness of the laws of the 
spiritual kingdom, as the child or the untutored, 
rustic trusts to the constancy and goodness of 



90 The Kingdom of God. 



the physical laws, without even knowing scien- 
tifically what law is. 

Let me conclude by calling your attention 
very briefly to the hinderances from entering 
into this kingdom. Hear the king again : 
Tesus said, " How hardly shall they that have 
riches enter into the kingdom of God." When 
His disciples were astonished, He explained by 
saying, " Children, how hard it is for them that 
*rust in riches to enter into the kingdom of 
God." It is difficult to say who is rich. In 
some places it requires millions of money to 
give one the reputation of riches ; but a poor 
boy who lives in a cellar and has no shoes looks 
up to one whose mother lives on the third floor 
back, and who has shoes. It is not the being in 
possession of money, but it is the trusting to it, 
which keeps men out of this kingdom. So long 
as you are so unspiritual that your stocks and 
railroads and horses are sufficient for you, so 
long as you are " at ease in your possessions," 
so long this kingdom of God will have no 
charms for you. But remember, young man, 
just beginning "clerking," just beginning to 
"lay by for the rainy day;" remember, poor 
woman, whose dreams are of silks and furs and 
laces and carriages, while you draggle your poor 
frock in the mire as you go from home to work 
and from work to home, that spiritually you 
need to have the same words addressed to you. 
The rich trust in the riches they have : you trust 
in the riches you have not. You are totally 
absorbed in the accumulation of money, because 
you believe that everything is in money. O. 
materialist, mendicant, or millionaire, how hardly 
shall ye enter into the kingdom of God ! 

Again, beloved brethren, mere professions are 
nothing. Hear again the words of our dear 
king, such tender and solemn words, out of a 
Fatherly heart, and addressed to fatherly hearts. 



Jesus said, "A man had two sons; and he 
came to the first and said, ' Son, go work to-day 
in my vineyard.' He answered and said, ' I will 
not,' but afterward he repented and went. And 
he came to the second and said likewise. And 
he answered and said, ' I go, sir,' and went 
not." That was the case. He asked His 
hearers which of the two did the father's will. 
The answer, if it do not touch ourselves, is not 
difficult. Of course the first, the non-professor, 
who did right upon repentance. All the pro- 
fessions of the latter were right. But he did 
not his father's will. 

It is our Communion-Day. A number of you 
are going to become members of this church 
Let me charge you, my dear, dear people, to re- 
member that the saying, "I go, sir," is nothing, 
the profession is nothing, if we do not yield to 
the laws of the kingdom. Both these sons did 
wrong, but the latter end of the former was his 
saving. How much better to say what the latter 
son said, and do what the former son did ! 

Never forget the solemn comment of Jesus on 
the answer of His hearers, " Verily, I say unto 
you, that the publicans and the harlots go into 
the kingdom of God before you." Before you / 
Before me! Shall we be so unspiritual as to 
trust to our mere churchmanship, while pub- 
licans and harlots, male and female prostitutes 
who have sold virtue for money, suddenly find- 
ing how utterly unsatisfying that horrible barter 
is, shall seek and find a spiritual kingdom, 
which "is not meat and drink, but righteous- 
ness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost ?" Dear 
brethren, let us bow our hearts in simplicity 
before God, and seek first the kingdom of God 
and its righteousness, and all other needful 
things shall be added unto us. So in us shall 
His kingdom come, and by us His will be done 
on earth as it is in heaven. 



XV. 

ttffty tht j^on Kfi Pat* cam*. 



"THE SON OF MAN IS COME TO SEEK AND TO SAVE THAT WHICH WAS LOST." — LUKE, XIX. IO. 



In this passage Jesus THE C HRIST declares His 
mission. It is to seek the lost and to save it. 

On His way to His final conflict, in passing 
through Jericho, He found the chief man of the 
revenue department in a tree, waiting to see 
Him — a man who was wicked, rich, and hated, 
but who, like many another hated, rich, and 
wicked man, had a secret desire for riches more 
powerful to produce happiness and more endur- 
ing than any material gains, however great, 
legitimately or illegitimately acquired. 

Every man has two sides — the outside, which 
the world sees, and the inside, which God sees. 
Often the former is worse than the latter, often 
the latter than the former. Zaccheus was bad, 
undoubtedly. He owns as much, and the busi- 
ness in which he was engaged was nefarious. His 
reputation was bad, and, as in many another 
case, was worse than his character. He was 
bad, perhaps as bad as people said he was ; but 
he had good spots in his heart for which he had 
no credit in the community. 

When Jesus saw him He saw him to the core. 
With divine insight He penetrated the rough 
husk of the bad life to the soft and juicy kernel 
of a soul that had its hours of gracious penitence 
and aspiration. With His divine and with His 
human eyes Jesus looked through Zaccheus and 
bade him come down ; for, said Jesus, speaking 
as God and knowing all the necessities of the 
universe, " I must abide at thy house to-day." 

Zaccheus received Him most joyfully. But 
the popularity of Jesus was on the wane. They 
were ready to find fault with Him anywhere in 
Judea about anything. The people murmured 
that He had gone to be guest with a man that 
was a sinner. It was precisely as if a minister 
of the gospel should go to dine with a liquor 
dealer, that being in this day the most nefarious 
method of making money, as the employment 
of Zaccheus was in his day. The reply of Jesus 
was, " The Son of Man is come to seek and to 
save that which is lost." 

As we shall consider the case of Zaccheus 
to-night, let us occupy ourselves this morning 
with those words of the Blessed Saviour. 

It describes an Advent, a Coming, as accom- 



plished. He has come. It is the statement of 
a past event, an event which has changed the 
whole current of human history. Its force lay 
in the great purpose for which it was undertaken. 
He did not drop into the world. He was 
not born as animals are. He came. He chose 
to come. He came of purpose. He planned a 
Coming which He executed. 

Adventurers have gone forth for gain or glory. 
When the mines of California and of Australia 
were discovered and proclaimed to the world, 
how men rushed from the eastern side of this 
continent and from Great Britain and many 
parts of Europe. Generally they were men who 
were worthless and adrift, but many were men 
who had worked manfully in civilized modes of 
trade and had failed, and hoped to reap new 
harvests in new fields: or men who had had 
heart-breaks and domestic troubles and chose to 
"rough it" awhile to see what that would do for 
them ; or they were young men who loved 
adventure and were tired of the vapid social life 
in the old States. And many of these men went 
for one thing and found another; went in flight 
from wretchedness and found gold ; went for gold 
and found death ; went for a livelihood and found 
thoughts and emotions and an education, as 
did Charles Bret Harte, who found " The Luck 
of Roaring Camp" and "Tennessee's Partner," 
each worth a hundred "livelihoods." 

And then there are what we Americans call 
"filibusters," a soft name for highwaymen on 
land and pirates on the seas, men who go any- 
where for plunder. 

And then there are those who go to the ends of 
the world through restlessness, or the pleasure 
of travel, or the desire to extend among men a 
knowledge of the planet they inhabit, as the ex- 
plorers of the source of the Nile, as Dr. Living- 
stone, as Dr. Hays, and Sir John Franklin, as 
Humboldt, and, greater than them all, Colum- 
bus, going on the hunt of a new world, which 
he found. 

And then there have been those who went 
forth to conquer the world, as Alexander of 
Macedon, who did it, and Napoleon of Corsica, 
who did not. 



92 



Why the Son of Man came. 



And then there have been those who have 
gone on special philanthropic missions, as Flo- 
rence Nightingale, who rose up from arnid the 
delights of an English home and shook her 
comforts down from around her and went to 
walk the wards of military hospitals and inhale 
the fetor of pest-houses, with such simple and 
blessed benignity of grace, that, plain woman as 
she was, she won the reverential love of hard 
soldiers so that they turned themselves painfully 
on their cots to kiss her shadow on their pillows 
as she passed. 

But, Jesus came TO SAVE A WHOLE LOST 
WORLD ! All that Philosophy can perceive or 
Poetry conceive of grandeur of emprise, of divine 
philanthropy, and of glorious endeavor, are in 
the enterprise of Jesus. 

Consider what He left, in order to endure the 
incarnation necessary for the accomplishment of 
His most transcendent undertaking. He came 
from other heavens that were glorious places, 
whose population was not lost, where the king- 
dom of God was established and where His will 
was done. No moral darkness and confusion 
were there. There order reigned and light pre- 
vailed, and the inhabitant was never sick nor 
deformed, nor troubled. There was no cunning 
and trick and treachery ; no oppressor, no tyrant, 
no down-trodden. There was no sin. There 
was no sorrow. No Absalom was breaking the 
heart of his father, no David was killing the man 
whose wife he had seduced, no Judas was be- 
traying love for a price or for a political move- 
ment, no Caesar was strangling the liberties of 
his country ; but beauty, truth, love, faith, and 
allegiance to Him pervaded the happy world. 
When he moved, all the thrones and dominions 
rose, when He sat all crowns were laid at His 
feet, when He smiled the innumerous ranks of 
the ever-active and happy hierarchies of the 
heavens thrilled with delight. He made the 
heavens what they were, and they worshipped 
Him. 

Think of the world to which He came. It is a 
planet of wonderful adaptabilities, and inhabited 
by a race of still more wonderful capabilities. 
As king of the kingdom of God, to Jesus order 
is of the highest consequence. He is the author 
of harmony. The harmonious progress of events 
according to law, the voluntary submission of 
intelligent beings to law, these are His delights. 
How disorderly was the world to which He 
came ! Every man and woman and child fran- 
tically or persistently struggling to break them- 
selves from the moral law, which is a cord of 
love, having lost much of what would seem to 



be a natural sense of the beauty of holiness, 
gone so far as to give the name of virtue to that 
kind of brute bravery which meets a wild beast 
in an amphitheatre very much on the beast's 
own level ; a world full of sin, and full of the 
anguish and degradation of sin, where He could 
not turn His eyes without beholding a wrong or 
a sufferer ! Above all, He knew that He was 
coming to His own and that His own would not 
receive Him. He knew that His very Advent 
would be made by the race an occasion to add 
to their deep condemnation the fact of rejecting 
all goodness, right, beauty, and truth by reject- 
ing Him. It was a plunge out of supernal light 
into the heart of darkness. 

Consider that in His coming He did not come 
for Himself, but for our race. There was noth- 
ing selfish in it. He did not so much need us 
as we needed Him. It was not to be as a 
healthy man walking the wards of a hospital 
and casting his eyes sympathizingly on the poor 
wretches writhing on the beds. It was not as 
the King of Italy lately visited his new capital 
of Rome, entering in the morning before day- 
light, escorted by a torch-light procession to 
some Quirinal palace, visiting a few chief places 
of interest, sending a diplomatic message to the 
most noted priest among the nations, and then 
going back in the evening, while hundreds of 
the citizens were losing all they had by a flood, 
while he went not near the inundated district. 
Not such was the advent of Jesus. He came to 
be one with us, bone of our bone, flesh of our 
flesh, sounding our depths of sorrow, wrestling 
with our foes, and showing the race the way up- 
ward, that we might be saved. 

We are never to forget, as the most charming- 
characteristic of the coming of Jesus, that it was 
wholly voluntary. He CAME. He was not 
brought, He was not compelled to come. No 
law of justice could have broken His conscious- 
ness of holiness and greatness if He had not 
come. It was of His own free will and choice 
that He came. We are never to forget that. It 
is one of the most important things to remem- 
ber and to reiterate. It is forgetfulness of this 
which leads to the most frightful mistakes as to 
the mission of Jesus. 

If God and Jesus be two several and distinct 
personal existences, then the transaction of Cal- 
vary as we preach it is a horror, which if true 
should set men and angels and God crazy for- 
ever. No man ought to be able to believe it and 
keep his senses. No angel ought to be able to 
believe it and not go utterly insane. Men mix 
their fundamental errors with the truth, and 



Why the Son of Man came. 



98 



then no wonder it seems hideous. They repre- 
sent God, one person, thrusting Jesus, another 
person, down into the sinful sorrowfulness of 
this world, and God, the autocrat, slaying Jesus, 
the innocent, for the sins of man, the guilty. 
And they charge that that is Christianity ! But 
that is a hideous caricature of the Christian 
scheme. There is no such teaching as that in 
the Bible. I am sure I never preach it, nor 
have I ever been so unfortunate as to hear any 
of my brethren of any branch of the church 
preach any such horrible nonsense. 

Jesus, who is the Maker, Lord, Judge, and 
Ruler of the Universe, the Jehovah, the only 
wise God, who only has immortality, being of 
eternal existence, chose, in the utmost freedom 
of unconstrained volition, to do a thing which 
was contrary to no law of right as pervading the 
universe He had created or as recognized by the 
intelligent souls that had been born out of Him, 
a thing which would be infinitely gratifying to 
His own nature and bring into existence a new 
and beautiful development of love. There is 
nothing horrible in that. It was a sublime self- 
sacrifice, but until every conceivable form of 
self-sacrifice shall come to be repugnant to men's 
best instincts and condemned by men's soberest 
judgment, there is nothing offensive in that. It 
was a father showing his children how to be 
sublimely unselfish. What is horrible in that ? 
It was an immense condescension ; but until 
every conceivable form of the stooping of the 
higher and stronger natures to the more lowly 
and feeble shall 5 in the purest instincts and best 
judgment of good men, come to be regarded as 
a disgraceful humiliation, this condescension on 
the part of the Eternal Father must stand for- 
ever as the most graceful act possible in the uni- 
verse. Viewed thus there can be nothing in the 
Mission of Jesus that is at all shocking. 

He CAME ! That is the grandeur and beauty 
of His mission. "The Son of Man has come to 
seek and to save that which was lost," is the an- 
nouncement of the highest and freest act ever 
performed in the history of the universe. 

" The Son of Man !" Jesus often chose to 
characterize His personality on earth as " The 
Son of God," and often as " The Son of Man." 
That earthly existence was the product of Divin- 
ity. It was likewise the product of Humanity. 
Had there been no God there had been no Jesus. 
Had there been no man there had been no Jesus. 
There could not be a Saviour of the race who 
was not God. There could not be a Saviour of 
the race who was not man. These are necessary 
truths. Do they not necessitate the other truth 



that somehow God and Man must come together 
in one person ? Is there any law of justice, or 
benevolence, or consistency against that ? It is 
obviously not impossible. Is it improbable ? 
If so, why ? If probable, where in all that we 
know of God, where in all that we know of men, 
where in all that we know of this world or any 
other, is there so probable a conjunction as in 
Jesus of Nazareth, Mary's son ? 

Why should He have come at all? There 
was something to save, something precious in 
His eyes, whatever it may seem in ours. He 
had created many a body capable of self- 
reproduction, of having offspring. They were 
animals. But among the animals whose self- 
propagation should produce a race of beings to 
spread over the ages He selected man, and into 
all the bodies produced in the physical genera- 
tions of that race He projects a soul, produced 
in the spiritual generations of His own existence. 
Everything else He regards with the eyes of a 
creator, but Man is precious to Him not only as 
the creature of His power but as the son of His 
love. And man was lost to Him. He had 
received such a moral shock as to break the 
attraction of the great centre, and he was going 
away, flying off as a planet might, if gravitation 
lost its power. And, as we know not what in- 
conceivable horror of wreck one such loose and 
lost planet might make among the spheres, so we 
cannot tell what injury to all the remainder of 
creation the lost man might have wrought. 

But it does not seem to have been that view 
that won Jesus. It was His own inherent love 
for man, an immense love, such as would belong 
to His immense nature,, a profound love that 
filled Him. If you ask me why it was necessary 
at all for Jesus to come, I answer you most rev- 
erentially, while I answer most philosophically, 
as I think, — it was because He could not help 
it : it was the resistless necessity created by love : 
there was no physical, no intellectual necessity : 
but He could not see man sink away and be 
lost without striving to save him. The blessed 
reason for His coming was in Him and not in us. 

I appeal to the fathers here w T hether they 
could see their boys drop into the river and not 
feel an inward compulsion to spring forward to 
the rescue. I appeal to the mothers here 
whether they could see their daughters fall into 
the fire and not strive to pull them forth. Cold 
criticism would ask why it was necessary, 
whether some other expedient might not have 
been devised, but love is swifter than reason. 
And God is the father and mother of man. 
How could He come to save us ? is the question 



94 



Why the Son of Man came. 



of reason in moments when it is unloving. 
How could He not come to save us? is the 
question of rational love. 

Our intellect needed to be saved, and our 
hearts, and our whole character, and our souls. 
We had gone too far off to have our courses 
rectified and the bond re-established, by any 
moral forces then at work in the universe. 
Having swung lose from its orbit, the erring 
planet cannot be brought back by any physical 
forces now at work. It will come back no 
more, but rush on to destruction, unless God 
lay His hand upon it, and bring it back. 
That was our case. God must lay His hand 
on us and bring us back. How could He 
do so, without an incarnation of Himself? 
Do you know? I do not. When law be- 
comes powerless to hold its subjects, some new 
force or some new law must begin to work; 
and in either case there is a miracle. Without 
a miracle a whole loved race of children was to 
be lost to God. Would He hesitate to perform 
a miracle lest some overscrupulous and hyper- 
philosophical son of His should afterward criticize 
the very methods of his own salvation ? What 
is God's highest law? That in which stands His 
essential existence. And what is that? Love. 
Is it any wonder that omnipotent Love should 
work a miracle, and that the God who so loved 
Humanity should appear in the flesh ? He had 
put His offspring in the flesh at every human 
birth ; why should not the whole Godhead and 
fatherhead come in the flesh ? It did not limit 
Him. He could as well exert His divine energy 
through all the heavens whether He should 
choose to be incarnate' or not. But it did bring 
Him so near to man that He could lay the hand 
of love upon him and save him. 

His incarnation did many things for us which 
we do not see could be otherwise done. 

I. It was a manifestation of God; "God 
was manifest in the flesh." The intellectual 
troubles and disorders of the race seem due to 
the fact that God had become an abstraction, 
had lost His personality to the minds of men, 
had become evaporated in philosophy, or lost in 
the clouds of mythology, or spilt in pantheism. 
The intellectual world must have its centre. 
The history of intellectual aberrations shows 
that no less an idea than a personal God has 
mass and weight enough to hold the universe of 
mind in orderly existence and movement. 

As there is a world that is seen, so there is a 
world that is unseen, material and spiritual be- 
ing the words used to distinguish them. All 
proper intellectual action needs knowledge of 



both worlds. The visible world had so engrossed 
us that our race was going down into lowermost 
materialism, so that the Roman type of thought 
was "earthly," the Grecian " sensual," and the 
barbarian "devilish." And on one of these types 
all human thought would have formed itself for- 
ever. But the Son of Man came, and, by His 
words and deeds and spirit, gave such evidence 
of the existence of a Personal God and a spiritual 
world that our intellects were saved. We have 
since had certain centre and blessed attraction. 
If the Son of Man had not come, long before the 
age in which we live the intellect of the race 
would have been utterly lost in the deep abysm 
of Atheism toward which it was rushing. 

2. The heart and head have close fellowship. 
The corruption of the former does much to in- 
crease the errors of the latter, and the mistakes 
of the head aggravate the sorrows of the heart. 
A race whose father is God would be as much 
orphaned in its heart by lack of knowledge of 
God, as if God really were not. It is a hard and 
puzzling and disappointing world, after all we 
know of God. If we had no Divine Paternity, 
if there was no father-heart in God, how could 
we endure our disappointed hopes, our unful- 
filled desires ? The pressure on our hearts would 
be intolerable. Its wounds would ulcerate. We 
must have sympathy. It must be human to 
come down to us. But if it be only human, it 
will soon begin to sink with us. It must be 
divine to lift us. The incarnation does this. 
The Son of Man lays the heart of Humanity, all 
throbbing with aches and pains and sores and 
fevers, on the heart of Divinity, all aglow with 
Divine health and love and power. We have 
the best assurance of the best sympathy in the 
universe. Without this our wild atheism would 
have burnt our hearts out. We should have 
died of an intolerable despair of the universe. 
The Son of God has come to save our hearts, as 
well as our intellects, by making the interests 
of God and man identical. 

3. Under the atheistic errors of the intellect 
and the desperation of the heart, how manhood 
was sinking away ! The average of manhood 
was diminishing. The plane of manhood was 
being lowered. Every wrong that every man 
does sinks that plane, and every good deed lifts 
it. One very bad man lowers it much ; one very 
good man lifts it much. St. John's argument 
stands in a light which commends its conclusive- 
ness to every intelligence : " For he that loveth 
not his brother, whom he hath seen, how can he 
love God, whom he hath not seen ?" But men 
seem generally to think that he is proving that 



Why the Son of Man came. 



95 



those who have piety must also be humane. 
That was probably in the Apostle's mind ; but 
something more important was meant. He 
meant to say, and meant his argument to show, 
that we never love God if we do not love man. 
The more we love our humanity the better pre- 
pared are we to love our God. Whoso lives in 
such a manner as to make men love all human- 
ity more and more, is a real promoter of true 
piety. Our race had never produced a perfect 
specimen of the kind until Jesus blossomed out 
into the most consummate flower of all man- 
hood, the Son of Man. We needed the infusion 
of a new vigor. We needed to see what sort of 
a beautiful thing a perfect man would be. We 
need to have before our eyes the model and 
exemplar of what perfect purity is without weak- 
ness and what perfect chivalry is without pre- 
tense. No human being can now estimate how 
low humanity would have sunk before our times 
if the Son of Man had not come. All sublime 
and beautiful living is of the inspiration of His 
history. His life and death have created thou- 
sands of instances of thoughtful and humane 
bravery unselfishly devoting itself to the cause 
of the weak, — instances the very recital of which, 
makes one's blood thrill into richness. He was 
one man whose altitude of life lifted the whole 
plane of humanity and taught us how to love 
the brother whom we have seen, and thus how to 
love the God whom we have not seen. 

4. He died for us that He might save our 
souls. Now, I am not going into the whole 
scheme of the atonement. But, after all, the 
saving of our souls is the great object of the 
coming of the Son of Man. Was there any 
danger to our souls ? If we believe the Word 
of God it was worse than this : we were " lost." 
" The soul that sinneth it shall die." There is 
only one disease fatal to the soul. That is sin. 
We were "dead in sins." Many diseases dis- 
organize our bodies, and these bodies, offspring 
of our parents whose original was a product of 
God's creative power, God does not choose to 
preserve in their organized form. Their death 
was part of His scheme for the physical uni- 
verse, but our souls, immediate children of His 
spirit, He is not willing to have lost. 

We cannot find out the Almighty. We can- 
not sound the depths of the Infinite Mind. But 
if He saw how the infliction of the penalty of 
death to the souls of men could be suspended 
by a union of the divine and human in one per- 
son, and then by a change which could and 
would be wrought in the soul by the fact of such 
a union producing such a life and death as that 



of Jesus, who are we that we should criticize 
God's apparatus or God's theory of redemp- 
tion ? But even we can see that such a mani- 
festation of love on the part of God is of all 
things that which is most calculated to make 
men hate sin. 

How often one suffers for another ? There is 
not an hour in human history in which there are 
not a thousand innocent souls suffering for the 
guilty. The parent is often wounded for the 
transgressions of his son, the child bruised for 
the iniquities of the parent. The chastisement 
of the peace of a whole nation is sometimes laid 
upon many, sometimes upon a few, and with 
the stripes of one is another healed. Surely 
each of us has had some office and ministry in 
which we have borne the griefs and carried the 
sorrows of others. Why might not the Su- 
preme God make one person the Supreme Man, 
whose heart should be large enough and strong 
enough to do all this in a supreme degree ? 
And how could that be unless God were in him? 

Was it not a sufficient inducement for this 
great work if it could save a whole race of souls 
from disappearing from the universe as thor- 
oughly as their bodies do from earth? It was 
God's family that was lost. Why should not 
God put forth every divine energy of power into 
every divine contrivance of skill to save them ? 
How could anything have been done for us so 
demonstrative of God's oneness of soul with 
man as His taking on Him a oneness of body 
with man, and thus becoming the Son of Man ? 

If any man ask me if this voluntary giving 
of Himself to death was not a suicide, I think I 
must meekly and devoutly answer that I suppose 
it was. But somehow all greatness of living 
and dying seems to me to have something of 
suicide. The histories my mother put in my 
hands in childhood, histories of lives and deaths 
she thought to be sublime and such as she 
would have her boy imitate, were all histories 
of suicides. Every man that has died for wife 
or child or friend or country or liberty or truth 
has been in some sense a suicide. He took the 
death of others on to himself. There seems to 
be no other gate to glory. The mother who 
plunges into the flood and holds her child up 
until the boat can come and take it off, sinking 
herself into the waves, does not deserve to be 
called a suicide in the coarse meaning of a 
word we have made infamous in our thoughts, 
nor does he who breaks his heart and shortens 
his life by defending his country when invaded. 
And yet, in some sense, I suppose they are 
suicides : they gain their lives by losing it, not 



DG 



Why the Son of Man came. 



in the desperation of hate, but in the sublime 
self-sacrifice of love. "He loved us and gave 
Himself for us." And so the Son of Man saves 
our intellects, our hearts, our manhood, and our 
souls.. 

Before we part let us look at the manner in 
which the Son of Man characterizes His own 
work. He came to "seek and to save that which 
was lost." It is an announcement of aggressive 
mercy. 

Suppose it should be authoritatively published 
in the papers to-morrow morning that some 
man, of boundless means, would begin at noon 
to pay off the debts of all who are now and have 
been for as much as three hours residents of 
New York. What a rush there would be to his 
office, and if he had a hundred offices how they 
would all be thronged ! What anxiety there 
would be in how many thousands of minds lest 
he should die or his means become exhausted 
before their debts were cancelled! And to- 
morrow night, if we could all go to our beds 
without a debt, the poor woman's rent paid, the 
young mechanic's loan discharged, the merchant 
near bankruptcy suddenly released from all lia- 
bilities ; oh ! how we should slumber and sleep, 
how profoundly, how sweetly, how refreshingly ! 

Or suppose we could all be assured that the 
angel who stirred the pool of Siloam would 
stand to-morrow in the Central Park, and that 
all who should be able even to look at him 
should be instantly healed of all manners of 
ailment. What a rush there would be for the 
Park ! How cripples would hobble and feeble 
women would creep, and babes and old and sick 
and helpless folk would be carried by human 
strength and every other mode of conveyance, 
that they might catch the healing sight ! And 
to-morrow night how much happiness there 
would be in all New York. Gout would have 
unlocked its biting clasp, and rheumatism have 
relaxed its torturing screw, and fiery neuralgia 
have quenched its flame of agony and fever 
have grown cool, and the broken back been 
shaped to grace, and the distorted eye restored 
to a serene look, and dyspepsia be dead, and all 
New York, without an unhealthy brain or lung 
or stomach, would sink softly into a slumber of 



balm, and the Angel of Health, brooding over 
the city, would softly murmur through the 
wholesome air, "For so He giveth His beloved 
sleep." 

But, brethren, instead of these things, sup- 
pose the good man should have a messenger at 
every man's door to-morrow with just enough 
to pay his debts, and suppose an angel should 
be at every door to-morrow noon to heal all 
invalids, so that no breathless debtor should be 
a moment in suspense and no helpless invalid 
be afraid he might not be carried where he 
could not go and where there was health and 
life for him, O how great the blessedness would 
be then ! 

That is what the Son of Man does. He does 
not stand and invite : that would be great. But 
He goes, He seeks, He hunts up, not. simply 
those in peril, but the lost, the lost, the lost ! 
Not the safe, not the good, the sweet, the beau- 
tiful, but the lost. He is able to save to the 
uttermost. He does not simply keep from fall- 
ing and from being lost, but he saves also that 
which is absolutely lost. 

O man, who may have entered this church 
to-day, whose sins have killed your mother and 
broken the heart of your wife and beggared your 
children, so that you have no friends, no money, 
no principle, no hope, — lost man, Jesus is seeking 
you. O woman, that may have come into the 
church out of the severe cold, hardly daring to 
sit among your decent sisters, driven from your 
father's house and your mother's heart, aban- 
doned by the man you trusted, without virtue, 
without food, perhaps hardened, without feeling, 
do not go out to-night and die in the cold on 
our door-steps. Look up ! Hear me ! For 
God's sake, hear me ! The Son of Man is come ! 
Is come to seek the lost ! Yes, and to save the 
lost. O men and women, as you walk the 
crumbling edge of despair, and go about our 
streets murmuring, "Lost! lost! lost!" hear 
Jesus speak. He speaks to you. He says : 
" The Son of Man is come to seek and to save 
that which is lost." Fall into His arms. Rest 
there. Weep there. Say, "O Son of Man, 
O Son of God, save me, save me /" 

And, He will ! 



XVI. 

"AND HE SPAKE THIS PARABLE UNTO THEM, SAYING, WHAT MAN OF YOU HAYING AN 
HUNDRED SHEEP, IF HE LOSE ONE OF THEM, DOTH NOT LEAVE THE NINETY AND NINE 
IN THE WILDERNESS, AND GO AFTER THAT WHICH IS LOST, UNTIL HE FIND IT? AND 
WHEN HE HATH FOUND IT, HE LAYETH IT ON HIS SHOULDERS, REJOICING. AND WHEN 
HE COMETH HOME, HE CALLETH TOGETHER HIS FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS, SAYING UNTO 
THEM, REJOICE WITH ME; FOR I HAVE FOUND MY SHEEP WHICH WAS LOST. 

"I SAY UNTO YOU, THAT LIKEWISE JOY SHALL BE IN HEAVEN OVER ONE SINNER THAT RE- 
PENTETH, MORE THAN OVER NINETY AND NINE JUST PERSONS WHICH NEED NO REPENT- 
ANCE. 

"EITHER WHAT WOMAN HAVING TEN PIECES OF SILVER, IF SHE LOSE ONE PIECE, DOTH 
NOT LIGHT A CANDLE, AND SWEEP THE HOUSE, AND SEEK DILIGENTLY TILL SHE 
FIND IT ? AND WHEN SHE HATH FOUND IT, SHE CALLETH HER FRIENDS AND HER NEIGH- 
BORS TOGETHER, SAYING, REJOICE WITH ME ; FOR I HAVE FOUND THE PIECE WHICH I 
HAD LOST. 

"LIKEWISE, I SAY UNTO YOU. THERE IS JOY IN THE PRESENCE OF THE ANGELS OF GOD 
OVER ONE SINNER THAT REPENTETH." — LUKE, XV. 3-IO. 



My beloved brethren, the great object of all 
preaching is to bring us to God and keep us to 
God. 

In all the teaching of Jesus we perceive that 
He never lost sight of that. His manners were 
simple: "The common people heard Him 
gladly." His manners were winning: ''All the 
publicans and sinners drew near unto Him for 
to hear Him " His style was attractive. He 
taught them in parables. We never grow so 
old as not to be fond of pictures and of stories. 
Every parable of Jesus could be expanded into 
a three-volume novel. Every picture painted 
by our Lord is most graphic in its drawing and 
most fresh and natural in its coloring. He did 
not intend His religion to be repulsive and His 
people to be stupid. 

Nothing is so intolerable as stupid preaching, 
because we feel that there must be some hypoc- 
risy in it, that no matter how rude in his educa- 
tion any man may be, when he comes to talk 
of the things which connect with the soul and 
eternity it ought to arouse his powers and arrest 
the attention of the hearers. That is the reason 
why the teaching of Jesus is so engaging. His 
whole nature was poured out in it. He had 
come to seek and to save that which was lost, 
and was intent on the success of His under- 
taking. 

He knew what was in man. He knew that 
man cannot love God until he believes that God 
loves him. In that the Son of God came to 



seek and to save that which was lost, Christ 
shows the love of God, and He also shows that 
love by a representation of the joy which God 
has when a lost soul is saved. Sometimes a 
man has a sudden aspiration after holiness, 
which faints away almost immediately, the man 
then having a profound discouragement, and 
saying, "If I loved Him perhaps He would love 
me." Have you never felt that ? And because 
you could not feel a high degree of enthusiastic 
attachment to Jesus and love for God in Jesus, 
you have abandoned all attempts at being heart- 
ily religious. 

Let me tell you that you begin in the wrong 
way. You are striving to bring yourself into 
an emotional state which has either no basis 01 
no sufficient basis in the convictions of your in- 
tellect. If you are endeavoring to love God by 
the mere force of your will, endeavoring to drive 
your heart into the position you think it ought 
to maintain toward God, this is no basis of love 
at all. Or if you undertake to erect a love for 
God on some foundation of opinions as to His 
general character or particular acts, either in 
creation or in providence, you have no sufficient 
basis. You must believe that He loves you. 

That is absolutely indispensable. You are to 
love Him forever. You cannot keep your heart 
warm by the distant fires of His divine glory. 
You must feel that you are building the super- 
structure of your hopes for all immortality on 
something that will endure forever, upon some 



Lost. 



Rock of Ages. It must be upon something 
which does not depend upon you and upon your 
frail nature, which is like shifting sands, but 
upon something in God, which is eternally en- 
during. You never will, you never can love 
Him until you fully believe that He loves you ; 
YOU, not some one else ; you, not some elect 
person, some good, righteous, lovely person, but 
you, the reprobate ; not when you are in peni- 
tence and faith and hope and love, but when 
you are in Laidness of heart, in rebellion, in 
infidelity, in despair, in all hatefulness of heart 
and life, lost, lost to all goodness, and all desire 
therefor. 

Now I beg that you will recollect that this 
does not indicate any indifference to distinctions 
on the pr.rt of God, but it does show an original, 
inherent, essential lovingnesson the part of God, 
and accords with St. John's most fundamental 
statement, GOD IS LOVE. If you choose to study 
the teachings of Jesus critically, you will per- 
ceive that He always keeps the moral differences 
of men in view whenever He presents the love 
of God to man. It was so in the text of last 
Sunday : " The Son of Man is come to seek and 
to save" shows the love of God ; "that which 
was lost" shows the clearness of His moral dis- 
tinction. He does love the unworthy, but not 
blindly. He knows better than you and I do 
how utterly undeserving we are of love, if our 
moral characters be considered ; and knowing 
all this, He loves us. 

That is the redeeming fact. The thorough 
conviction of that proposition, with any reason- 
able conception of its meaning, must produce in 
us a real love for God. It is the basis of the 
Christian religion, it is the reason of the Chris- 
tian experience. "We love Him because He 
first loved us." 

You will see this same fundamental principle 
of religion set forth in the two parables in this 
morning's text, as well as in that of the prodigal 
son, of none of which we propose an exposition 
at this time, but in all of which reigns this idea 
that God loves what He knows does not love 
Him, that He loves the erring, the straying, 
the bad, the lost, and has joy when He saves 
them. 

Let us come still more closely, if possible, to 
this idea. Let us look at the figures in which it 
is embodied. A woman has a piece of money. 
A man has a sheep. Another man has a son. 
Here is ownership, in some sense. We notice 
also that the woman had nine other pieces of 
money, the shepherd ninety-nine other sheep, 
the father at least one other son. The lost was 



not all that belonged to the owners. But some 
were lost and others were not. One piece of 
silver was lost, nine were not. One sheep was 
lost, ninety and nine were not. One son was 
lost, the other was not. Here is a distinction. 
It was a distinction which the owners recognized, 
a distinction which brings out the regard in which 
they severally held that which was lost. 

Now, the first thing to notice, it seems to me, 
is that something was really "lost." We have 
used that fearful word — oh ! it is a most fearful 
word ! — so often that I fear the edge has been 
taken off its exceedingly strict and sharp mean- 
ing. We regard men as in peril and likely to 
be lost, and suppose that some will be lost, but 
what that losing is seems quite a vague and 
indefinite idea to us. 

Jesus says that we were "lost." To that 
dread word in our own language we give at least 
eight meanings, each having some painful ele- 
ment. Let us review them and then apply them. 

1. Whenever one has wandered out of his 
way through bewilderment or perplexity, he is 
lost ; as a traveller or a mariner, one lost in forest 
or desert, the other wandering over the seas, not 
able, by reason of loss of instruments or the 
condition of the weather, to ascertain his bear- 
ings. 

2. Another use of the word denotes alienation. 
A man's wife or child may live in his house and 
eat at his table and yet become so utterly weaned 
from him that he may be said to have lost his 
child or his wife. Or, a person may have be- 
come alienated from all right purposes, and is 
said to be lost to virtue, lost to honor. 

3. We call that lost which has physically 
been so changed that it is ruined for any pur- 
poses for which it is intended. Thus a ship 
that has been wrecked is a lost ship. Bank-bills 
thrown in the fire are thus lost. It does not 
mean annihilation. It means simply a change 
of form which deprives the lost thing of its 
original value. We know that not a particle of 
matter is annihilated. The coal is reduced to 
ashes. It is no longer capable of combustion, 
and therefore all its uses as coal have ceased. 
It is not annihilated, but it is lost. 

4. When anything has been once in the pos- 
session and the owner is deprived of it, even 
if by his own act, it is said to be lost, as a lost 
limb, lost character, lost reputation. 

5. The word is used when what was owned 
has been parted with unintentionally or un- 
willingly, as the money which the woman in the 
parable lost, or the sheep which the shepherd 
lost. 



Lost. 



99 



6. When anything has been wastefully squan- 
dered, so that the good which might have been 
had from it is not, it is said to be lost, as a lost 
opportunity or a lost day. 

7. When there has been an effort to gain 
something, or to win something, as the stakes 
in a bet or victory in a battle, or reciprocity in 
love, when the effort has failed, the bet, the 
battle, and the bride are said to be lost. 

8. There is one other meaning, stated by the 
lexicographers and familiar to us all. When 
anything has passed to such a distance that it 
has ceased to be visible, it is said to be lost. 
The ship has not gone down at sea, but she has 
passed into a fog and is lost. So a man may be 
lost in a crowd. The word here implies the effect 
upon another person, not upon himself. He 
has no sense of lostness. It is the friend who 
is looking for him that feels the perplexity. 

Now, in some or in all of these senses must 
the word be used in the high connections of 
thoughts in which Jesus employed it. You will 
observe that three of these meanings have direct 
bearing on that which is lost, and five on the 
loser. We shall return to that thought. Is 
there a single signification of the word which is 
not applicable to the relation which sin has 
made between God and the soul of man ? 

I. The bewilderment of senses implied in the 
word, the perplexity in. which one goes astray, 
is seen, it seems to me, very painfully in the 
great diversity of the answers we give one an- 
other when we begin to inquire the way out of 
the deep dark forest in which we have lost our- 
selves. The very word has passed over into 
metaphysics. ''Error" is a guideless wander- 
ing, a wrong going, a departure from the path 
which leads us where we desire to go and where 
we ought to go. 

We do not know whether our home is behind 
or before us, or to the right hand or to the left. 
And when we meet in groups in the dark forest, 
we have no light. We may see now and then a 
star, glinting up among the dark branches of 
the weird overgrowth, but we can take no bear- 
ings from such an observation. " Which way, 
brethren, does heaven lie?" is the question of 
our hearts. Scores of different answers come to 
us, and we plunge forward, sometimes nearing 
the outrance, sometimes plunging deeper into 
the woods. Then we are suffering. We are lost, 
and are conscious of it. We may become so 
thoroughly lost as not to be conscious of our 
condition, may settle down satisfied with the 
dark morass and grim forest figures, and believe | 
that there is no day, no open landscape, no high j 



heaven, no better home for the soul. Then we 
have grown dull and do not suffer, but we are 
enduring vast unperceived injury. 

2. Alienation from right principles and pur- 
poses is one of the earliest developments of sin 
in a human life. The soul is a lost subject of 
the kingdom of God, because it does not give 
voluntary service to the Rule of Right. All the 
injury of being in conflict with its own life and 
welfare comes to the lost soul. 

But this also leads to suffering on the part of 
others, because there is always herewith the vio- 
lation of some relation. When a child becomes 
alienated from the parent the child is a sufferer, 
if conscious that the alienation exists. Even 
when hardened it is a loser. The wife who feels 
that she is losing love for her husband out of 
her heart, suffers until she becomes hardened, 
and even then she endures the loss of all the 
beauty and sweetness that conjugal love brings 
to the character. In both cases the father and 
the husband is a sufferer, because he is a loser. 
He has lost a daughter and a wife, although 
both women may be quite virtuous otherwise, so 
far as they could be in this state of heart. 

So, just in proportion as a man's love for God 
diminishes he is lost, and when that love totally 
ceases the man is totally lost. The Heavenly 
Father is the loser. The man suffers while he 
has any vividness of conscience, and then lives 
a dead-life, because he has in his life none of 
the beauty and sweetness which loving the 
Father brings. 

3. The soul of man is in some measure lost 
when it ceases to do that which it came into 
existence to do. It was born to reproduce the 
image and beauty of the Heavenly Father, to 
enjoy His love and to give Him love. It is for 
love that human beings exist. All other things 
grow out of this. A man may not be annihi- 
lated. We have no more reason to believe that 
spiritual substance will undergo annihilation 
than that material substance will, but it may 
undergo as many transformations. Some of 
those transformations may be such as to fit it 
still more for its main functions, as leaves, when 
they undergo that change which transforms 
them to coal, become more useful for all the 
ends gained by combustion. 

Some of those transformations may be such 
as shall utterly and forever incapacitate the soul 
from resuming the discharge of the functions of 
what we may call organic spiritual life, being 
such a transformation as coal has undergone 
I when it has been reduced to ashes. This seems 
I a state of irretrievable loss. We have no means 



100 



Lost. 



of ascertaining scientifically whether any human 
soul has undergone such a transformation, but 
no soul whose state we have investigated has yet 
done so, and the searching of the Holy Scrip- 
tures is adverse to any such supposition. If it 
did, God would be the loser in the final end. 

4. Man can never pass out of the power of 
God. The Almighty can deal with him as with 
any mere creature. But man is not simply a 
creature of God : he is a child of God. A man 
may have possession of the person of his child 
or his wife, and be able to inflict upon that per- 
son any pains his skill and strength can con- 
trive to cause. But the body is not the child, 
the body is not the wife. He can chastise, cut, 
maim, burn, bruise, and thoroughly destroy 
that body, but he cannot reach his child: he 
cannot reach his wife. He has lost his child. 
He has lost his wife. What can it be to the 
Heavenly Father to look down on me and see 
only such a creature as he sees in a hog or a 
worm, a being no more a child to Him than 
those brutes that perish ? He has lost His child 
and kept only His creature. The offspring of 
His spirit has gone and He has left only the 
product of His power. 

5. Whenever the word "lost" is used in re- 
gard to any article of property, it always implies 
that the separation between it and its owner was 
wholly unintentional on the part of the owner. 
That is precisely the case with the human soul. 
God has had no part in losing it. This must be 
kept perpetually in mind. We are apt to forget 
it. We are apt to feel that God is a party in 
some measure to all the damage which the soul 
sustains, that it is His system of irreversible 
law which crushes the soul until it is lost. 

This is terribly to the prejudice of the Heav- 
enly Father. And, it is utterly false. What 
interest can He have in losing His own child 
which never would have been begotten but for 
His love ? Why, if I should go into the woods or 
the waves with my child, and come out without 
her and she should be lost, and any man should 
say that it was in any degree my fault, I should 
vehemently resent it as the most intolerable 
slander and stigma on my manhood. And 
Jesus, in the parable before us, appeals to this 
humanity in us even as regards a sheep, which 
is so much less than a child: " What man of 
you, having a hundred sheep, if he lose one — ?" 

No, dear brethren. The woman did not 
intentionally, did not even willingly, lose her 
piece of uioney, nor the shepherd his sheep ; nor 
does the Heavenly Father intentionally or will- 
ingly lose us. If we want His word for it, He 



puts it on the ground of reason : " Have I any 
pleasure at all that the wicked should die? 
saith the Lord God, and not that he should 
return from his ways and live ?" How could He 
have? What gain is there to Him that a soul 
is lost? But He puts it more tenderly in the 
language of entreating love: "Why will ye die, 
O house of Israel ? For I have no pleasure in 
the death of him that dieth, said the Lord God : 
wherefore turn and live !" And then He 
solemnly mingles an oath with the entreaty, 
saying, " As I live, saith the Lord God, I have 
no pleasure in the death of the wicked ; but that 
the wicked turn from his way and live : turn ye, 
turn ye from your evil ways ; for why will ye 
die, O house of Israel?" His unwillingness to 
lose is further manifested in what He does to 
save. Jesus said, "The Son of Man is come to 
seek and save that which was lost." Does that 
look like willingly losing it ? Does that look 
like an intention to inflict a loss on one's self? 

6. The Heavenly Father never loses a child 
by reason of any carelessness on His part. He 
does not squander what is more precious to 
Him than all the star jewelry of the splendid 
material heavens. But a man may lose himself 
that way. He may squander time and powers 
and soul, so that he loses his life and makes no 
gain ; all life gone, all vigor, all soul energy 
gone, — the man effete in mind .and heart and 
will and soul, man lost utterly, all gone away, 
lost, until he is worthless to himself and to 
humanity. If he could hold the title-deeds for 
all the real estate in all the worlds of God, he 
would be utterly poor. " What shall it profit a 
man if he gain the whole world and lose his 
own soul ?" 

7. A man may peril his soul to the losing 
thereof in some contest in which he stakes him- 
self against some object or end which seems to 
him to be desirable. The loss of the game in 
which he is engaged is the loss of his life ; that 
is to say, if he do not succeed, he will be in such 
circumstances as will deprive his life of being 
what life is intended to be. 

The idea of the peril is presented, and the idea 
of the loss is suggested by a sketch of remark- 
able power by the German artist Retzsch, in 
which a young man of goodly person and ad- 
mirable face is engaged in a game of chess with 
the Devil, while the guardian angel of the youth 
stands by with folded hands, watching the result 
with intense interest. Men have rushed from 
gambling-hells and shot themselves by the stroke 
of suicide into other hells, because the deadly 
sensation of being lost rushed upon them over- 



Lost. 



101 



poweringly as soon as they discovered that their 
fortunes had been lost. 

So on a single battle and its results have em- 
pires hung and been won or lost as the tide of 
battle turned. 

Life is such a contest, such a battle. The 
beaten player stands appalled as the stakes of 
inestimable value are swept off into the lap of 
his opponent, and the discrowned loser of a 
Waterloo goes away, to eat his heart out on 
some lone Helena of the sea. 

All these significations of the word ''lost" 
apply with great intensity to the condition in 
which one places the soul. They are grouped 
in three parables, two of which are in the text. 
There may be a distinction intended by the 
three figures under which a soul is represented, 
as a coin, as a sheep, as a son. I will not repeat 
to you the queer fancies of some commentators 
about these, some of which, however, are very 
suggestive of important spiritual truths. But 
you must notice the gradation and the lesson 
which that teaches. 

The coin is inert. It cannot wander. It can- 
not riot. It may fall out of the hand. Just so 
some men read their spiritual history. They 
did not intend to go astray. They did not 
intend to wound a father's love. But they 
seem dropped from the hand of God and rolled 
into an obscurity in which they can be of no 
use, although of full spiritual value and stamped 
with the image and the superscription of God. 
That represents one class of the lost. 

Another is presented under the figure of the 
sheep which wanders from the fold at first 
through mere silliness and through ignorance 
of the perils outside. So are rr.any lost. Men 
and boys do not consider how easy it is to take 
one wrong step, and that after that it is much 
easier to take the next wrong step than to re- 
turn ; and that when a sheep is once in the 
woods, and the frights of wandering have begun, 
how, even the shepherd's voice, God's loving 
call to the lost, may drive the wandering sheep 
into greater distance, darkness, and distress. 
In all ages and all literatures the wandering of 
a lost sheep has been used to represent the 
unguardedness of our weak and ignorant hearts. 
" All we like sheep have gone astray," mourned 
David, and all the singers of the songs of the 
soul have echoed the lamentation. 

The perversity of the heart in loving evil 
rather than good is painted to us in the picture 
of the prodigal son. Here is a man lost by 
fighting against love, lost by wilfully throwing 
himself out of safety into certain peril, lost by 



precipitating himself over the edge of dangei 
down into the chasm of a spiritual ruin. 

In the money there is the loss of material 
value. In the sheep it is this value and life which 
propagates the valuable. In the son it is both, 
together with all the sentiments of parental and 
filial love, all the holiest ties, torn, lacerated, and 
profaned. This represents the completest loss of 
all. I have not taken the parable of the prodi- 
gal into this morning's text, because it is in- 
tended rather to represent the penitential return 
of the sinner caused by the seeking love of the 
Saviour, but use it with the other parables for so 
much of it as bears upon the subject we are now 
considering. 

A solemn and important question comes now 
to be considered: Who is the loser? My an- 
swer is, God. It is to that view so strongly pre- 
sented in these parables that I call your atten- 
tion. In our private thoughts, in our public 
prayers, in our religious books, in our sermons, 
it seems wholly ignored. It is never alluded to. 
I cannot now point you to a paragraph urging 
this thought, if I ever saw it. Every mind seems 
taken up with the sinner. The sinner is selfishly 
absorbed in contemplating the spiritual disaster 
to himself. Appeals are made to him on selfish 
grounds. He is urged to strive to be saved be- 
cause it is such ruinous loss to himself not to be 
saved. The coin, the sheep, the prodigal, are 
all cared for. They have all the sympathy of 
the pulpit, the prayer meetings, and the press, 
while the woman, the shepherd, and the father 
have none. As if the coin suffered as much as 
the woman ! As if the sheep suffered as much 
as the shepherd ! As if the reprobate son suf- 
fered as much as the wronged and dishonored 
father ! As if the sinner suffered as much as 
the Saviour ! 

We know that this is not so in our social 
relations. The innocent suffer more than the 
guilty. The pure mother is all night tossing 
and rolling upon the arrows infixed in her heart 
by her lost daughter, who is spending those 
same hours of darkness in boisterous orgies. 
When a ship goes down at sea, the sufferings of 
the drowned are brief, but the survivors suffer 
through long years. The loser is the sufferer. 
Let us remember that. If we throw ourselves 
away and become lost, let us not forget that we 
are doing more injustice to God than to ourselves. 

We must rectify our thoughts of God. To 
most of us is He not a high, serene, feelingless 
Being, as destitute of sentiment as the cold 
firmament over our heads ? Do we not regard 
what we call His " love" rather as an absence of 



102 



Lost. 



anger and hate than as a positive passion of 
affection ? But is that true ? Is that the Scrip- 
tural representation of our God ? Can God be 
as happy if His children are lost as if they are 
saved ? "What man of you" asked Jesus, put- 
ting the question on the ground of common 
humanity. If a human shepherd feel so for his 
sheep, will not the Divine Shepherd feel for all 
His flock ? 

See again how He loves us in the exertion He 
makes to save us. In the case of the woman see 
how picturesquely her carefulness is portrayed. 
She "lights a candle," she "sweeps the house," 
she "seeks diligently," she perseveres until she 
find it. You can almost see her moving every 
article of furniture, examining the cracks and 
crannies, and turning up the carpets from cellar 
to garret. You can almost hear the sweep of 
her broom and see the flying dust. And who 
then has ever seen a shepherd hunting for a lost 
sheep can ever forget how the interest in the 
sheep is intensified as the shepherd pursued his 
way after the wanderer ? And could the Heav- 
enly Father lose us and not seek us ? Would 
He simply look out to see if we were returning ? 
Would He merely invite us to return? "Till 
she find it" is said of the woman and her coin. 
" Till he find it" is said of the shepherd and his 
sheep. And does not this imply the persevering 
seeking of Infinite Love ? 

See how the Great Teacher draws us nearer 
and nearer to the heart of God. The shepherd 
had a hundred sheep. If one were lost the rich 
man would still have ninety and nine. The 
woman had ten pieces of silver. She would 
not be greatly impoverished if one-tenth of her 
money were gone ; but still in this case is a 
larger proportion of loss than in the case of the 
sheep. But the father had only two sons. If 
one were gone, half the life and light of his 
home would have departed. Is there any 
earthly parent that loves more than the Heav- 
enly Father? 

Above all, there is the joy at the saving of the 
lost, not the joy of the lost that is saved, not 
the joy of the angels, but the joy of God. Here 



is love drawn in lines of sublimity a.id painted 
in colors of surpassing splendor. This is the 
utmost loftiness and augustness of love. The 
infinite heart of the Infinite Father throbs and 
glows with the holiest passion. His essential 
nature intensifies. He has His most majestic 
bliss. It is too vast to be comprehended. He 
has had a child lost. He has a child saved. 
Think of it, mother, whose boy was supposed 
to have been crushed in the late railway disas- 
ter, but who came back to you next day and 
nearly broke your heart with the gladness of his 
coming ! Think of it, wife, whose husband was 
lost in intemperance, but is saved now and sits 
in manly love beside you, while you are so full 
that if you speak you seem foolish with a de- 
lightful craziness ! O men and women, lift your 
hearts to heaven and see how glad the good God 
and Father is when the tidings of the salvation 
of a sinful soul goes flying up to heaven. The 
angels know that it will give Him joy, therefore 
they watch over the processes of salvation in any 
soul and rush up into the heavens to proclaim 
the gladdest of all glad news there. He does 
not conceal His majestic sweetness from the an- 
gels. He lets them know the joy wherewith He 
rejoices. He calls His friends about Him, as the 
woman and the shepherd did. He gives vent to 
His great joy as the earthly father did, and says 
to all the happy sympathizing angels, "This 
my son was lost and is found !" 

Dear people, let me ask you two questions to 
be carried home in your hearts : 

Have you permitted the Heavenly Father to 
lay His hand on your head and say, " This, my 
son, was lost and is found" ? 

Are you striving to give God that divine joy 
by endeavoring to save other souls ? 

Remember that you may accumulate immense 
fortunes, and build hospitals and churches, and 
do many wonderful things, which Heaven may 
not disapprove and which may fill the world 
with your praise, but you must be saved if you 
would fill the heart of God with joy and shake 
all the heavens with shouts of inextinguishable 
rapture. 



XVII. 

Me Srinitg of (ktdStwfat. 

* HE HATH SHOWED THEE, O MAN, WHAT IS GOOD : AND WHAT DOTH THE LORD REQUIRE OF 
THEE BUT TO DO JUSTLY, AND TO LOVE MERCY, AND TO WALK HUMBLY WITH THY 
GOD?" — MICAH, VI. 8. 



THE Lord had a controversy with Israel, 
brought about by no hate upon the part of God 
and no Avrong upon the part of God. It was 
Israel's tault wholly. 

And now, in this little dramatic sketch the 
prophet presents the case of the parties with 
great power. Almighty God calls the frame of 
universal nature "the mountains," and the 
"strong foundations of the earth," the sublime, 
inanimate creation to bear witness to His solemn 
statement which devolved the responsibility of 
the difficulty from Him upon Israel. In the 
presence of these grand, mute witnesses His 
people surely will feel the truth. And God 
pleads with Israel: " my people, what have I 
done with thee? and wherein have I wearied 
thee ? Testify against me." And Israel is silent. 
Israel had nothing to " testify" against the Lord. 
He then reminds them how He had broken the 
bonds of Egyptian slavery from their necks, how 
He had sent such leaders as Moses and Aaron 
and Miriam before them, and how He had kept 
them from the spite of their enemies when 
Balak, the king, desired Balaam, the prophet, 
saying to him, " Come, curse me Jacob, and 
defy Israel." He inclosed a vast history of 
mercy in the four words, " from Shittim unto 
Gilgal." 

Jehovah's appeal to the past was convincing. 
Israel was convicted. The controversy must be 
healed. 

And now follows Israel's reply, which we shall 
do well to study in the remembrance that human 
nature is the same, and that we shall see our 
own spiritual faces mirrored in this description 
of Israel's character and ways of dealing with 
God. They did just what many a man in this 
congregation and thousands of men in Christen- 
dom are doing at this very moment. They en- 
deavored to settle their difficulties with God by 
a compromise. You will find that this wretched 
expedient of compromise is not a modern device. 
Its essence is in the supposition that there is 
wrong upon both sides. In a controversy be- 



tween men this may or may not be true. When 
God is a party it is false always. They said, we 
are willing to give up certain things if we may 
keep certain things ; God may have our prop- 
erty if He will let us have our sins. 

Or, perhaps, it may be interpreted as an at- 
tempt to bribe or circumvent God. Perhaps 
God would be satisfied if they yielded Him 
certain portions of their goods. Or they might 
."come before" the Lord, " prevent" Him, u get 
ahead of Him," " flank" the Lord of Hosts. All 
which sounds very odd in plain English, but it 
describes exactly what those people wanted to 
do, and what some of us are attempting to do 
every day of our lives. 

Look at the offers they make the Lord. 

I. They will give their property. Oil for 
the sanctuary and a ram for sin-offering were 
ordained of the Lord in the symbolical temple 
service. Oh, said these men, is it oil the Lord 
wants ? He shall have rivers of it. Does He de- 
sire a ram ? we will give Him thousands of rams. 
You will perceive how they had materialized all 
religious service. It seems necessary to have 
some ceremonial in religious worship. In this 
world we cannot dispense with the material 
things. And so, because God had ordained the 
offering of a ram, to keep in view a great prin- 
ciple in His moral government, these men 
fancied that the more they gave of these the 
more the Lord would be pacified. 

The same thing comes out in modern guise. 
It appears in what may be called sacramentism. 
Symbol of his sufferings — a bond of communion 
for His followers — a monument of His love — 
Christ ordains the Eucharist. A man feels that 
something must be done to close this contro- 
versy between God and his soul ; and he is 
persuaded that a strict ritualistic observance of 
an elaborate rubric, a mystical and superstitious 
treatment of a sacrament, or a crusader's 
fierce zeal for a creed he never stops to ana- 
lyze or even comprehend, will appease an angry 
God. 



The Trinity of 



Excellencies. 



Sometimes it assumes an eleemosynary form 
of huge proportions. It begins with the simple 
tribute of an altar-cover or a stained memorial 
window. But peace does not come to the soul. 
The man reasons with himself that he has not 
gone far enough. He knows that he does not 
care for money, except as it gives him some en- 
joyment. He loves to make it and he loves to 
spend it, not for any good, not under moral 
rule, but for the excitement and pleasure of it. 
He spends as fast as he makes. And so he is 
willing to build for the Lord a great church, 
walls as well as windows, and finish it up with 
the richest and fullest ecclesiastical upholstery. 
He will go further. If that does not satisfy the 
Lord, he will put up a hospital for the Lord's 
sick, an asylum for the Lord's poor, a theologi- 
cal seminary to make young preachers to go 
forth denouncing the crimes and frauds by 
which the money for all was gathered out of 
weaker hands. The Lord may have just any- 
thing He wants, if He will only let the sinner 
go on with his sinning. 

You who listen to me may not be able to go 
so far in your offers, but the spirit is the same 
if you feel that pecuniary contributions, large 
for your means, exempt you from the duties of 
religion, from lives of justice, mercy, and hu- 
mility, from the spiritual worship of Almighty 
God. And you must let me affectionately warn 
you that it is quite easy to come to such a state 
of mind as to say to yourselves : "I pay hand- 
somely for the support of my church ; why 
should I be expected to lose pleasant parties or 
take some hours from my business to attend 
church meetings ? Why should I be expected 
to make it a point to be in my place at the ser- 
mon every Sunday ?" What is this but striving 
to please God with many rams and with much 
oil ? You are willing to give to the Lord and to 
the Lord's house a percentage of profits in your 
trade, or one barrel out of a score that may flow 
from your oil wells, if the Lord do not exact 
justice, mercy, and humility. 

A clergyman may fall into the same error. 
He may say : " I have given my youth, my 
manhood to preaching the Gospel; I have seen 
other men grow rich, when I knew there were 
riches for me if I chose to leave off preaching ; 
I desired greatly to enter upon another profes- 
sion offering larger worldly rewards ; and even 
in the Christian Church I have refused high 
places and richer congregations, because of my 
devotion to principle, or to a feeble folk that I 
believed were the Lord's flock. Lord, is not 
that enough?" No, brethren, even with preach- 



ing and self-sacrifice we cannot bribe God into 
selling us a dispensation for sinning. 

2. But these people were willing to go fur- 
ther: they were willing to give their first-born 
for their transgression and the fruit of their 
bodies for the sins of their souls. That was a 
fearful offer, if it meant that they were willing to 
present their children in sacrifice on the altars 
where bullocks were slain. But, perhaps, they 
meant this — that they were willing to endure 
any bereavement, any difficulties, any severe 
providences, to go under the rod, to suffer the 
discipline, if not required to surrender what that 
discipline is intended to remove. It is as if they 
had said, "Lord, our children are part of our- 
selves ; the greatest sacrifice we can make is 
our own flesh ; if Thou art so difficult to ap- 
pease, take them ; it is very hard to give them 
up, but we will not murmur against Thy Divine 
Providence, so long as Thou dost allow us to 
live and enjoy ourselves in our own way." 

Have you never felt anything of that kind ? 
Have you never comforted yourself with the 
reflection that as God had visited you with be- 
reavement of what you most loved, stricken 
down your first-born, taken away what you most 
valued of all worldly possessions, suffered ca- 
lumny to assail your reputation and bankruptcy 
to overtake your estate, surely He would let 
these be set over against your sins and trans- 
gressions, and let them go toward balancing 
your accounts in the world to come ? And the 
greater the affliction, have you not fancied the 
greater the margin for sinning ? And, in the 
midst of your sinfulness, have you not had a 
strange kind of resignation to affliction, grow- 
ing out of this very fancy that you were giving 
your first-born for your transgression, and the 
fruit of your body for the sin of your soul ? 

Now, look at the characteristics of every bribe 
offered to God to purchase from Him the privi- 
lege of living in sin. 

i. They are insignificant. Compared with 
one sin, what are all living beasts or all the pro- 
ducts of the land or sea ? And, compared with 
what God has, what are all these that you can 
give ? Count your flocks, and then remember 
that the cattle on a thousand hills are His ; that 
all the gold and silver are the Lord's ; that the 
incense you burn is His, and the censer upon 
which you burn it; that all the marble and 
metal and crystal with which you propose to 
erect churches and other great buildings to God 
are His; that in an instant, in the twinkling of 
an eye, God could cause to spring up such a 
temple to His honor as should extinguish the 



The Trinity of Excellencies. 



105 



sunlight with its glory, as the sunlight extin- 
guishes the stars. What things kings count 
treasures are God's, and indescribably beyond 
all that glitters in the visions of Arabian dream- 
ers are the glorious things He holds in His un- 
covered caskets. 

2. It is impracticable. You cannot give to 
another what belongs to him. And to God be- 
long your children and your rams and your oil. 
Moreover, your desperation, like that of Israel, 
makes you exaggerate, as it made them. He 
appoints a ram. You offer thousands. You 
have no such numbers. Oil ! A river of oil ! Did 
you ever see a river of oil ? But thousands of 
rivers of oil, who has them to give ? Now does not 
the mere making of such an offer show the folly 
of men, and their infatuation with sin? It is 
not a thousandth part so expensive in dollars and 
cents to be good as it is to be bad. So far as 
offerings go, as one ram is to a thousand so is 
the cost of godliness to the cost of wickedness. 
The impracticability of this whole procedure of 
buying exemption ought to appear, if men would 
but consider that they are attempting to produce 
spiritual results with physical instruments. He 
would be an impractical man who should 
attempt to cut a tree into planks with a reason 
or shape his ideas with a saw-mill. Just as 
impractical is he who puts a ram or a ritual 
between his sin and its consequences. 

3. These propositions are wicked — one of 
them being eminently unnatural — in which the 
sinner is willing to sacrifice his offspring rather 
than his selfish indulgence. It mistakes the na- 
ture of sacrifice. It mistakes the nature of God. 
It represents Him as an Almighty Demon will- 
ing to devour the creatures He has made. We 
may be so unnatural as to be willing to go on 
in a course of sin which brings anguish to our 
children ; but God is not an unnatural Parent. 
He cannot be induced to compound a felony. It 
is not sacrifice he desires, but obedience ; not so 
much for His own sake as for man's, of whom it 
is notably true that to obey is better than sacri- 
fice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. 

4. These proposals are insulting to God. They 
go upon the supposition that God is to be recon- 
ciled, and not man ; that we sinners are more 
amiable than our Maker; that a difficulty having 
occurred between us, we are readier than He to 
be reconciled. It is an outrage to behave thus 
toward Him who is supremely good. No matter 
in what shape you put it, any effort on your part, 
any crying, praying, striving, struggling, which 
implies that God is to be converted, and not 
yourself, is an insult to God and is injurious to 



your own moral character. You are the party to 
be thoroughly changed. You must have other 
principles. You must surrender your ground 
of rebellion and give up your sins. I beseech 
you to abandon the position which so many of 
you hold, that you are reasonable and God is 
unreasonable. It is pitiable to see you going on 
your ways so complacently, so quietly, so com- 
posedly, as if you would say, "Well, come what 
may of it, / am not in fault ; there is nothing 
upon ?ny side which keeps God and myself apart; 
as soon as God will become reasonable we shall 
be friends !" Such, in plain language, is the 
blasphemy of what you think a very reasonable 
and philosophic position on your part. 

5. It is unreasonable. It goes upon the sup- 
position that all a sinner has to do is to keep 
God quiet; to dodge, if possible, the police of 
the universe, or lock the bolt of the Thunderer, 
or bribe the hand of the executioner. It fails to 
see that the difficulty is, as some philosophers 
would say, subjective, not objective ; inward, not 
external ; in the 7?zan who sins, not in any Being 
who may be offended ; in the fact of the sinning, 
not in the consequences of the transgression. If 
he could paralyze the hand of the hangman on 
the gallows, or bribe the jajlor to set him free, 
or gag the mouth of the judge, or control the 
verdict of the jury, or suborn the witnesses on 
the trial, or hide the dead body of his victim 
from all human discovery — still, to a murderer, 
there would subsist in his history and exist in 
his memory the fact that he had committed a 
murder. So, if I could quench the fires of hell, 
sweep the judgment seat from the august arrange- 
ments of eternity, and make the Omniscient 
oblivious of my existence and acts, I would not 
thereby annihilate the fact that I am a sinner. 
The trouble is not in the Heavenly Father, it is 
in the sinning child. The Father cannot make 
sin not to be sin. You mistake the whole case. 
It is not your condition, or the results of your 
acts, or your reputation among men, or your 
relation toward God, that you need to change, 
but your character. The whole trouble is in 
you. 

And " He hath showed thee, O man, what is 
good : and what doth the Lord require of thee 
but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk 
humbly with thy God ?" 

Is that unreasonable ? What do you require 
of your employe but to deal justly and kindly 
with your customers and be respectful toward 
yourself. You see that religion is not a pomp 
of service, but a power of character. You see 
that the changes God reasonably requires are 



106 



The Trinity of Excellencies. 



not external, but internal. You see that it is not 
so much what a man does as what he is. You 
see that the teachings in Micah accord with the 
Sermon on the Mount as thoroughly as do the 
teachings of the practical Apostle James. 

Let us study awhile this trinity of excellencies, 
this cluster of the manliest virtues, this descrip- 
tion of the man who meets all God's require- 
ments. 

I. First of all there is justice, as the basis of 
all good in human character. 

I am not sure that men have any rights what- 
ever. Perhaps all this very fine talk about " the 
inalienable rights of man" might be made to 
appear, upon strict analysis, to be merely the 
phosphorescence of a dead and rotting licen- 
tiousness. Certainly the phrase is to be taken 
with limitations. Perhaps we should all finally 
agree that all rights are really and absolutely 
in God. But there is something in every 
man, call it by whatever name you will, which 
every other man is bound to regard as sacred. 
Each man feels that in himself, whether he can 
tell what that inviolable thing is or not. If God 
has all rights, He has given man certain privi- 
leges, which are to be regarded. Perhaps you 
can reach the pith of the matter by considering 
why man exists, and will agree that he lives to 
be happy by being good and doing good. Now 
the just claim which each man has upon all 
other men is, that no man shall wantonly inter- 
fere with his power of usefulness or his privilege 
of goodness ; that no man shall injure his char- 
acter, or his reputation, or his physical estate — 
which last embraces his person and the material 
objects he has acquired by construction or by the 
rightful exchange of his products. 

You will perceive that justice goes a great way 
beyond the mere payment of debts : it is a stern 
and strict regard for what God has given to 
every man and a punctilious meeting of all 
claims upon us made in virtue of our own 
humanity and the humanity of the claimants. 
A man's happiness depends upon his character, 
his reputation, and his property. A wanton 
diminishing of any of these is a sin of injustice. 
When a boy hears your profanity or obscenity, 
and has his soul tainted and his character in- 
jured, you have done him injustice. When 
your clerk sees you carry through to apparent 
success a plan which is wicked, so that he is 
encouraged in straying from integrity, you have 
done him injustice. When a suspicion against 
a man is nursed by your gossiping tongue or 
slanderous transmission, you have done the man 
injustice. You had no right to weaken him in 



society— just as you have no right to take money 
or other material property which belongs to him. 
Any act upon your part, not compelled by duty, 
which takes from a man the power of being 
good and doing good is injustice. A man's 
reputation must be as sacred in your eyes as 
his property. And yet there are men so honest 
in all questions capable of being put in the shape 
of dollars and cents, so determined to have their 
own money and give every other man his money, 
that if they have received one cent too much in 
payment will walk two miles to pay it back to 
the meanest man that ever traded with them, or 
walk two miles to collect the one cent still due 
them on settlement; there are men in whose 
hands you may leave your accounts and your 
money with perfect security, who would starve 
to death before they would even "borrow" your 
funds without your consent, and if you die they 
will render the last fraction to your heirs ; but 
these same men will meet in the social circle and 
repeat stories they have heard to your disadvan- 
tage, and, because they did not invent them, feel 
that they have done you no injustice. My 
brethren, there are a thousand claims which our 
fellow-men have upon us which cannot be re- 
duced to a money formula. The evil effect of a 
mercantile life is that it makes, to the merchant, 
everything seem indifferent which is not capable 
of a pecuniary representation. And you, mer- 
chants of my congregation, must guard against 
that evil. You have not fulfilled the whole law 
of justice when you have collected no more than 
your dues and paid your debts to the last cent. 
There are claims of honor, of relationship, of 
courtesy, of society, upon every one of us, just 
as binding as any pecuniary obligation. Do you 
call that man just who would sell his coat from 
his back and his shoes from his feet to pay the 
last cent of a gambling debt he made last week 
at the races, but, night after night, lets his wife 
wait for him till the small hours, and gives his 
children no paternal example and instruction in 
righteousness ? I do not. Nor do I call that 
man just who is so conscientious that he puts 
his goods as near the front windows as possible 
that his customers may make no mistake in 
selections, and tells them every defect in every 
case, but grinds his clerks to the lowest point of 
salary that will keep them, drives the beggar 
from his door, suspects every man of being a 
rogue until he finds he is honest, and is so in- 
tent upon being rich that he does not see his 
children out of their beds except on Sunday 
mornings, and does not visit his aged mother 
once in five years. When the judgment throne 



The Trinity of Excellencies. 



107 



shall be set and "the books shall be opened," 
you will find that there are other books besides 
day-books, journals, and ledgers. 

We seem to think that justice is a narrow 
simple, easy virtue. It is the broadest, the 
deepest of all, the foundation and support of all; 
whatever a man may be or do, if he be not just, 
any little wind of disaster will upset his whole 
edifice. He that builds on his wit, his manners, 
his genial disposition, builds on sand. The rock 
is justice. There is no grander virtue than 
justice. There is none more difficult. 

II. If justice be the strong geologic forma- 
tion, the underlying foundation, mercy is the 
rich soil that lies thereupon and brings forth 
flowers of beauty and fruits of sweetness. Jus- 
tice towers like the Alps, and mercy lies like the 
rich valleys between. A man who was simply 
an incarnation of justice would be a hard char- 
acter among men, how grand soever he might 
be. The world has its sinners and saints with 
whom we are to do justly, and it has its sinners 
and its sufferers with whom we are to love 
mercy. 

For wise purposes God allows in society men 
and women to whom we owe nothing in strict 
justice, who have never done anything for us, 
and never can be of any service whatever ; be- 
tween whom and ourselves there exists no rela- 
tion whatever beyond a common humanity ; 
but they are poor and needy and suffering. 
God has intended that that shall constitute a 
claim. For the finest development of our char- 
acter God means that we shall do good to them 
who do us no good, who are of no material 
profit to society. It is not justice we give them, 
but mercy. It is not because they are good or 
bad, but because they are sufferers. Their mis- 
fortunes may have come upon them on such 
wise that they could not possibly have avoided 
them. It was not their fault. Or their vices 
may have brought down upon them the penal- 
ties of sin in this world. That is not our affair. 
The business of mercy is not inquisitorial. 
Help first and reprove after. Their suffering is 
their plea. God designs to train us into making 
our sun rise upon the evil and the good and our 
rain to fall upon the just and the unjust. Some 
of the most cruel things are done by visitors of 
the poor, agents of our charities, and workers 
of our philanthropies. I 'have seen self-respect 
wounded most terribly in the bestowment of an 
insignificant benefaction, a gift made when the 
eyes of the giver said, "Take this, you good- 
for-nothing wretch ; you don't deserve a crumb, 
but I suppose, as your necessity brings you 



under the provisions of our society, I must do 
something." O mercy! A traveller in Ireland 
said to a miserable object on the wayside : " Are 
you not needy ?" " Y es." " Then why do you 
not beg ?" "Faith, and is it not begging that 
every sore on my legs and every rag on my body 
is doing this blessed moment?" He had the 
philosophy of mercy. If our hearts be right 
the most eloquent appeal will be the silence of 
the dumb, the darkness of the blind, the halt- 
ing of the lame, and the pennilessness of the 
poor. 

But mercy, strictly speaking, is the exercise 
of real kindness toward offenders by those who 
have power to punish or distress or simply to 
abandon them. 

(i.) There are the offenders against God's 
laws. Have you never noticed, brethren, how 
vigorously men vindicate the law of the Lord 
when some one else is the violator? Even when 
it is not specially a sin against society, they be- 
come violent in their "virtuous indignation," 
so called. Let me inform all such that the 
Heavenly Father does not ask their aid in 
administering the affairs of His moral govern- 
ment. Let me tell all such that when the beam 
falls from their eyes, they may see more clearly 
the evil of the mote that is in their brother's 
eye. Let me remind all such that the Heavenly 
Father will be infinitely more pleased with the 
observance of the law upon their part than with 
all their denunciation of the sins of others. To 
love the truth is more acceptable than to hate 
liars, and to be honest one hour is worth a day's 
denunciation of rogues. Be merciful. Your 
mercy toward that poor sinner will not be inter- 
preted by the Heavenly Father into a favoring 
of the sin. Is the poor sinner going to the 
judgment-seat and to hell ? Oh, as his fellow- 
sinner, have mercy ! Do not torment him be- 
fore his time. 

(2.) There are the offenders against society, 
those whose acts interfere with the comfort and 
advancement of the commonwealth. Does 
society reform these people by mercilessness ? 
Never. You vilify, you punish, you harden and 
corrupt them. Is that mercy ? What right 
has society to punish ? No individual has 
the right to inflict pain merely in vengeance ; 
no commonwealth has that right. We may 
correct for improvement, may take measures 
to restrain the power of evil men and to change 
their evil dispositions ; but we are not to 
avenge society. We are to be merciful to the 
graceless. They are the very people that need 
mercy. 



108 



The Trinity of Excellencies. 



(3.) There are our personal enemies. They 
have hated and wronged us, while we are totally 
harmless as toward them. What is to be done 
in such a case ? I can tell you what is not to be 
done. No man of us must dare to take ven- 
geance in any form or in any measure, at any 
time, privately or publicly, in our individual or 
in our official capacity. Almighty God has, by 
express edict, reserved all the functions of that 
prerogative to Himself. He never delegates it. 
"Vengeance is mine; I will repay," saith the 
Lord. That is reason enough why I should for- 
bear. All the vengeance which should come upon 
my enemy will befall him in just measure and at 
just such time as he should receive it. Every 
injury of every man shall surely be avenged. 
We are spared the trouble and expense. And 
it is well. If the man pushes me over and cuts 
my head on the curb-stone, and I undertake to 
repay, I may push him a little too hard and cut 
him a little worse against a little harder stone ; 
and so he will have an account to settle with me, 
and where is it to stop ? But when the God of 
exactest justice deals with him there can nothing 
too little or too much be dealt to the offender. 
So, then, I am not to take vengeance. But I 
am to show mercy. For his good reformation 
and for my good growth in manliness I am to 
lie in wait to do him good. I am to study to 
make him happy. If he has maligned me, I 
must study the good that is in him and speak of 
it, and let him and others be encouraged in 
doing good. Has some man broken you down 
in business? Well, you must begin again, say- 
ing to yourself, all the while, that you will strive 
to gain commercial power again, so that if he 
meet a disaster you may have the heroic delight 
of relieving him and demonstrating to him and 
the whole world that mercy is a virtue as sublime 
as it is beautiful. 

" Cowards are cruel, but the brave 
Love mercy, and delight to save." 

And now, beloved brethren, as you go forth to 
practice these virtues, remember that they are 
not antagonistic. There is no justice which is 
not merciful and no mercy that is not just. And 
remember that you are not to do mercifully as 
by constraint, but are to love mercy, so that it 
will be the delight of your life to feel it in your 
own hearts and to behold it in others. 

III. The third of these virtues is humility. 
We must walk humbly with God. It must be 
from a great misapprehension that any man can 
consider humility a low or painful sentiment. It 
is so beautiful in man or woman, high or low, 



that it sits upon one like a well-fitting garment. 
It is said that a nobleman once suddenly ac- 
costed good John Wesley in the streets of Lon- 
don with the abrupt question, "What is hu- 
mility, sir?" "My lord, it is when a man has 
a correct opinion of himself." And so it is. 
Does the Lord want you to think less of your- 
self than you deserve to think — or more ? In 
either case there would be an error of judgment. 
It is when a man has a just estimate of himself 
in his relations that he is removed from all pride 
on the one hand, and all mean-spiritedness on 
the other, and is a humble man. 

To walk humbly with our God — 

(1.) We must submit our intellects to His 
teachings. Religion does not demand a throw- 
ing away of our reason, but it does demand that 
the finite reason shall not be in hostility to the 
Infinite ; that the finite reason shall employ 
itself in understanding and obeying the Infinite. 
He that made the eye made light. He that 
made the human intellect must have also put it 
in such relations to truth that the former can 
perceive the latter. It is no degradation to the 
eye that it can see only as there is light. Is it 
not a shame to the eye when it becomes so 
proud that it refuses the light, and fights 
against the light? Just so it is with our intel- 
lects. Their grand guide is God's truth. When 
they become too proud to follow that, instead 
of rising to a higher dignity they sink in dark- 
ness and are lost in destruction. 

(2.) Our lives are to be shaped by His pre- 
cepts. Our lives are not our own. They are 
His. They are to be spent for Him, and He 
has so arranged the world that His children 
have their greatest glory and happiness when 
forming their lives by His teachings. To find a 
philosophy for ourselves, to hope to be able to 
lift ourselves without His aid, is mere madness. 
The grandest living that has been done upon 
earth has been done by men who set all theii 
faculties to the simple work of conforming their 
whole existence to the model of Christian life 
set forth in the Gospel of the Son of God. 

(3.) Our wills are to submit to His providence. 
How often, in our pride and in our inordinate 
affection for a plan or a " cause," do we feel that 
it is so plainly right that God must be on our 
side, and, being on our side, that He must con- 
duct affairs to a certain given issue, which we 
suppose necessary for the successful vindication 
of the right ? The cause may be right and God 
maybe upon our side, and yet, just because He 
is God, and sees through all things, He gives 
precisely the turn we should not give. And we 



The Trinity of Excellencies. 



109 



rebel. Is that beautiful ? Is that wholesome ? 
Is it manly ? He walks humbly with his God 
who says, "The Judge of all the earth will do 
right;" who lets the world see and know that 
he feels that one thought of God is worth all his 
reasonings, and one motion of God worth all his 
exertion. There is nothing unmanly in bowing 
to the king and yielding allegiance to a just sov- 
ereignty. 

Let me conclude by asking you for a moment 
to contemplate the beauty and glory of these 
three characteristics. Think of a man per- 
fectly just, perfectly merciful, perfectly humble. 
What more does he want to make his moral 
character complete ? The trinity of these vir- 
tues in the unity of a man would be a sight to 
rejoice the earth and gladden the heavens and 
satisfy the demands of the Infinite Soul of the 
Universe. 

And because, whenever we talk of what is 
transcendent, Jesus instantly stands up in our 
minds and hearts, let me remind you how per- 
fectly He was the Exemplar of the world in all 
these virtues, and that the doctrines of the atone- 
ment as set forth in the Holy Scriptures of the 
New Testament have, more than any other sys- 
tem of philosophy or theology or theophilan- 
thropy, the blessed tendency to nurture the 
growth of these three excellencies. 

The faith that does not produce these virtues 
is a dead and worthless faith. Be affectionately 
warned against substituting the excellency of 



your creed for a life of lofty virtue. Hear what 
he said who by nature seemed endowed with 
practical common sense beyond his brother 
apostles. St. James depicts a man who relied 
upon his orthodoxy. To such a one came a 
brother or sister naked and destitute of daily 
food. And the orthodox brother rolled up his 
saintly eyes and folded his hands, and said, 
"Depart in peace, be warmed and fed/' but 
gave neither clothing nor food, being quite sat- 
isfied to be orthodox and not feeling the neces- 
sity of being good. With what keen sarcasm 
St. James treats such a case. " You are ortho- 
dox, are you ? You believe in God, do you ? 
Well, so do the devils. But they tremble. And 
you, whose religion consists solely in the cor- 
rectness of your creed, have exactly enough 
orthodoxy to go to hell upon, and no more !" 
O my brethren, be warned, be warned. 

Where is the unreasonableness of religion ? 
These are the things God requires. If any 
preacher, church, or council demand other 
things, or less, or more, let not that discourage 
you. They have no right to require what God 
does not require. But what doth the Lord re- 
quire of thee, O man ? 

With your fellow-man do justly. 

In your inmost heart love mercy. 

With your God walk humbly. 

And so an entrance shall be administered 
unto you abundantly into the everlasting king- 
dom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 



XVIII. 

pj * n u t g fax Qtit*. 

THE LORD HATH ANOINTED ME .... TO GIVE UNTO THEM BEAUTY FOR ASHES." 

ISAIAH, LXI. 3. 



Who will give us beauty for ashes ? 

It was the Sabbath. Jesus had just passed 
through the terrible ordeal of the Temptation 
in the Wilderness. He entered the synagogue 
of Nazareth, " where he had been brought up," 
and stood up to read ; and there was delivered 
to Him the book of the Prophet Isaiah. He 
opened on this sixty-first chapter and read the 
passage which includes this promise of beauty 
for ashes. And He closed the book and sat 
down. And something in Him drew all eyes to 
Him. And He said, " This day is this Scripture 
fulfilled in your ears." 

Seven centuries had passed since Isaiah had 
predicted His" coming into whose mouth the 
prophet put this wonderful promise. More and 
more the church and the world had been going 
down into ashes, more and more all the humil- 
iation and mourning symbolized by ashes had 
been coming upon all peoples, including the 
Jews, and now the Giver of beauty had come, 
with an offer of salvation put before men in the 
light of aesthetics. 

Salvation is beauty, perdition is ashes. Ashes 
are the worthless residuum of a lost, a burnt- 
out soul : Beauty is the radiant crown of a re- 
deemed spirit. 

Jesus offers Beauty. And what is that ? 

We have now another illustration of the free- 
dom with which we use words to which we attach 
vague significations and which we therefore find 
it difficult to define. It is also an illustration 
of the enjoyments men have who are unable to 
make a philosophical analysis of the causes of 
their pleasure. From the days of Plato to those 
of Ruskin men have been striving to answer the 
question, What is Beauty? But, long before 
the days of either, men were enjoying the beau- 
. tiful ; and millions of men who never knew 
that any one had ever undertaken to determine 
what Beauty is, are to-day enjoying the beau- 
tiful. 

The three categories which have occupied 
philosophical students in all ages are truth, 



beauty, and goodness ; truth satisfying the intel- 
lect, beauty the sensibilities, and goodness the 
will ; truth in the mind, beauty in the sentiments, 
goodness in the life. Logic is for the operations 
of the intellect, aesthetics for the emotions of 
the heart, ethics for the volitions which govern 
the life. 

Now this great offer of salvation carries us 
into the region of the sensibilities, the science 
of which has in this century attained the name 
of aesthetics, and really has only lately come to 
be a science, although the subjects thereof, like 
those of all the other sciences, have been in ex- 
istence since the foundation of the world. In 
examining the question of beauty we can con- 
sider it only in such aspects as bear upon the 
spiritual use which a Christian sermon is to 
make of the results of philosophical investiga- 
tion. A library can be made of books that have 
been written upon the subject. 

Let us start again from the beginning. All 
things in the material world which address our 
senses are concrete expressions of the arche- 
typal thoughts in the mind of God. That much 
of Plato I heartily believe. But beyond that I 
believe that these eternal ideals of God are real- 
ized doubly — once in the spiritual and once in 
the material world. I use the word "realized" 
purposely, because I desire to lead you to be- 
lieve, if you do not already, that the spiritual 
world is as real as the material world, that spirit 
and matter, or soul and body, are equally sub- 
stance, spiritual substance and material sub- 
stance, so that you may ascend from the low 
grossness of believing that nothing is substan- 
tial which is not material. Matter is the first 
and lowest thing. Spirit is later, finer, higher. 
But we ascend to the spiritual through the nat- 
ural, and the original idea is in both the matter 
and the spirit, and we learn much of the latter 
from the former, which is tangible and repre- 
sentative of the intangible. 

Heaven is mapped out in earth. All meta- 
physical ideas are probably embodied in phys- 



Beauty for Ashes. 



Ill 



ical forms, as the ineffable glory of Godhead is 
dimly adumbrated in the splendors of material 
suns. When the Heavenly Father comes to 
make revelation of eternal spiritual truths, as in 
the Bible, He employs the objects with which we 
are familiar to give us some perception of the 
subjects with which we should be familiar. 
When, therefore, he says "sun," "rock," 
"river," "lily," "bird," "sheep," "star," or 
calls the name of the natural objects all around 
us, we should set ourselves to find the higher 
glory, the deeper foundation, the more ever- 
fluent stream of peace, the more enduring 
purity, or whatever else there is that is behind 
the visible. 

Whatever spiritual ideas are meant to be 
conveyed by "beauty" and "ashes," we may 
learn by considering these ideas in their physi- 
cal forms. I fear that I am not skillful enough 
to manage this subject without an occasional 
resort to the terms of the school } but we must 
understand one another. 

We come to inquire what it is in material 
things to which we give the name of beauty. 
It is that quality in things outside of us which 
imparts delight to our feelings or sentiments as 
distinguished from our understanding. This is 
sometimes called the assthetical faculty. ^Esthet- 
ical science engages itself with the laws of 
feeling as logical science does with the laws of 
thinking and ethical science does with the laws 
of acting. The beauty of a thing is not de- 
pendent upon its utility ; not upon its being true, 
as the logical Aristotle taught : nor upon its 
being good, as the ethical Plato taught. Real 
beauty must have firmest connections both with 
what is true and with what is good, just as the true 
must always at last turn out to be both beauiiful 
and good, and the good turn out to be both 
true and beautiful. But Beauty is not goodness 
and is not truth. Goodness does not always 
please, nor does Truth always ; but Beauty 
always gives pleasure. " A thing of beauty is 
a joy forever," is the strict statement of an 
ascertained philosophical truth. 

Beauty is both outside of us and inside of us, 
which some philosophers designate by objec- 
tive and subjective. Beautiful color may reside 
in a picture or flower, that is objectively; but 
without eyes, retina and optic nerve, the 
beauty of color could not reside in us subjec- 
tively. What, then, is that in sound or form, 
in scenery or structure, in painting, statuary, 
music, or poetry, which is in itself beautiful, 
and which when perceived by us gives pleasure 
to our sentiments or sensibilities? Is there 



some highest law of beauty? A question which 
all the best minds have attempted to answer, 
and to which such adverse and sometimes con- 
tradictory answers have been made, must re- 
ceive a modest reply at our hands. 

We sav that that is beautiful which stands in 
its right place in the order of universal things, 
and is fulfilling its own measure of self-out- 
giving without regard to return. God is the 
perfection of the. beautiful. He is central, yet 
always giving Himself out unselfishly. He has 
in some measure reproduced that type in all 
material things, and the more it preponderates 
the more beautiful the thing, whether we find 
it in the animal, the vegetable, or the mineral 
departments of nature. Order, without unself- 
ish out-giving, is mere stiffness ; out-giving, if 
it be not both orderly and unselfish, is mere 
melancholy wastage. But in so far as anything is 
existing not for itself, but for others, it is, so 
far, in its place at its work, obeying its highest 
law, and stands in the harmony of the universe 
by reason of this, and so is beautiful. When 
we see it it gives us pleasure, and we say that 
we have seen beauty. Every flower, face, 
sound, thought, that we feel to be beautiful is 
in perfect harmony with the universal law of 
order set for the illimitable physical universe, 
and is constantly giving out, as well as receiving; 
but the beauty is in the giving, not in the 
receiving. It is not because our eyes look upon 
a picture that it is beautiful, but it is beautiful 
because it has the power of sending the rays of 
light which fall upon it back on our eyes in such 
a way as to give pleasure to the aesthetic faculty, 
for which service it gets nothing from us. 

A beautiful thing is not beautiful because it 
is useful, for many things are useful but not 
beautiful. A beautiful thing is useful because it 
is beautiful. The beautiful is that which gives 
us disinterested satisfaction. It may be of use 
to us, as a beautiful watch or a beautiful horse 
or a beautiful picture which one is using as a 
study, but the beauty is not in that utility. 

There is nothing higher than beauty. It is 
the crown of whatsoever has it. And so the 
Hebrew word in the original of this text signi- 
fies beauty and a crown. Now, spiritual beauty 
is what Jesus offers us. 

Ashes are supposed to represent the very 
opposite of beauty. In nature nothing totally 
perishes ; there is nothing which is not beautiful 
in its connections. Ashes give nothing, and 
seem out of all harmony. Ashes are the earthly 
residuum or the mineral particles of combustible 
substances after combustion. They cannot give 



112 



Beauty for Ashes. 



light nor heat nor electrical influence. They 
represent a life from which all that shines, 
warms, and thrills, has been burnt out, leaving 
pure ugliness. They point back in a most 
melancholy way to a season of brightness, 
warmth, and comfort. One can stand over an 
ash-barrel on the sidewalks of our streets and 
muse upon it until his fancy brings up all the 
parlors and chambers and nurseries made 
cheerful by the blazing fire in which the wood 
and coal were reduced to ashes, all the beauti- 
fied faces and beautified pictures which shone in 
the irradiations of the lambent flames of wood 
or the glowing bed of coals. But that which 
was causing pleasurable emotions so plenteously 
and for no return. has gone; dead, inert, un- 
pleasing ashes remain, ashes for beauty. 

So, if all the charities and hopes and faiths 
have been burnt out of a life, it is ashes. It has 
gone out of order. It can no longer give 
pleasure. When the ancients, in their mourn- 
ing, put ashes on their heads, thus defiling their 
hair and their faces, they meant to say that all 
the beauty of their lives had been reduced to 
ashes. 

There is nothing so inert as ashes. They are 
the nearest nothing of all material things. 

And yet, even in ashes, in the bottom and 
refuse of all things, has the Almighty Father 
put an intimation of the ideas of possible 
regeneration and salvation. There is one prin- 
ciple left, a principle which, combining with 
another in another body, produces a third sub- 
stance which may pass on from grace to grace 
until it become beautiful again. This process 
goes forward in the manufacture of soaps, in 
which the alkali of the ashes is combined with 
the acid of fatty substances. This new sub- 
stance is a fertilizer. Spread upon the garden 
it may be incorporated with the violet and the 
rose and again be delicately or glowingly beau- 
tiful. 

But when once the ashes have been leached 
and all the alkali extracted, what remains seems 
lost, and existence incapable of imparting any 
pleasing sensation to any living thing, — merely 
existing ; not annihilated, but lost. 

Now, how does Jesus save us, how does He 
bring us back from the poverty of ashes to the 
wealth of beauty ? 

In answer to that let me first call your atten- 
tion to what sin does for us. It does two things : 
it changes our self-love into selfishness and 
throws us out of the harmony of the universe. 
It produces the latter by accomplishing the 
formeK From this comes all the wretchedness 



and lostness represented by ashes. God is a 
centre of pure fire, constantly giving out His 
heat, His light, His vitalizing electric energy. 
This divine efflux from God is an influx to all 
spiritual and material substances, so that in 
that sense the Lord God Creator is in every 
particle of every material thing, and in all the 
faculties of every spiritual existence, imparting 
Himself to every created thing in the measure 
in which it is capable of receiving that Divine 
Energy. 

The Life of God is a perpetual Out-giving. 
It is His joy, His crown of rejoicing. The glory 
of God is not what angels and men give Him, 
but what He gives men and angels. "The 
heavens declare the glory of God." How? 
Not by giving anything to Him, but by showing 
that He is perpetually imparting to them, that 
all that is in them is a stream pouring out from 
God. And they in their turn imitating this 
divine life-principle of God, are giving, giving, 
giving, each to other, each to all, all to each. 
"Day utters speech to-day, night shows knowl- 
edge to-night." 

The original law is " give." The harmony 
of the universe is secure only while all things 
are giving. The first note of discord is when 
something ceases to give, as if when one string 
of viol or harp refuses to impart to the air 
those peculiar and special vibrations God de- 
signed it to give. Natural order inexorably 
demands this out-giving. To fail in any measure 
is to begin to decay. To fail entirely is to die. 
To fail is to cause failure elsewhere, to die 
is to cause death elsewhere. It is an endless 
chain. Constant and perfect giving of Himself 
for the good of all that he has made, the very 
creation of creatures having been that they 
might receive Him into themselves, is repro- 
duced in all the universe. The sun gives itself 
to the far-off flowers of our earth, flowers that 
can never waft their perfume back to the sun. 
The flower gives the fragrance it drew from 
earth and sun to the frolicsome breeze that runs 
away with it and tosses it carelessly into the 
window of some invalid to whom it is a bless- 
ing. 

This, then, is the universal law, this is the 
cause of the harmony of the universe, this is the 
inmost essence of beauty. Back to this Jesus 
brings us by breaking up the selfishness of our 
hearts and making us feel once more that godli- 
ness, that is God-like-ness, is desirable; thus 
destroying the power of sin over us. 

Let us go back to the old story of Eve and 
the serpent. I think it has become somewhat 



Beauty for Ashes. 



118 



fashionable in some quarters to ridicule this 
narrative in Genesis as a myth. If it be a myth 
it is one invented by a mind that had marvel- 
lous insight into what we call human nature. 
If it be a myth it has more truth in it than any 
history written in our century. What does it tell 
us? First of all that man was made good and 
became bad, was made beauty and became 
ashes. We seem instinctively to believe that, 
if we believe in creation at all. If we begin to 
reason, we shall reach that conclusion ; for, it is 
not to be supposed that the great Creator would 
begin His mighty work bunglingly; and human 
nature has not improved through all the cen- 
turies of which we have any report ; and all the 
improvement of individuals and communities 
has come in by influences from outside. These 
are three of the considerations which lead us to 
believe that human nature has gone from beauty 
to ashes. 

How could that first step downward be taken, 
seeing that man is represented originally good ? 
There was nothing bad in him which might 
become worse. Now see how faithful this old 
story is to nature and to truth. It was most 
natural that a good creature, having reason, 
should desire to be as like its Creator as possible. 
Its own beauty inclined it to love the beautiful. 
The ugly, the inharmonious, the selfish, could 
have no temptations for it. To be godly, God- 
like, that was its hunger and its thirst. Its joy, 
its crown, its beautv, was in its unselfish out- 
giving of what it had to all about it. If it could 
have more knowledge and power, so as to make 
a greater out-giving, so much the more happi- 
ness for it, and the desire for happiness is the 
supreme passion of God and man. The tempta- 
tion was presented to the human soul on that 
side. There was the other way of approach. 
The disaster came at a moment in which man 
lost sight of one element of beauty, namely, 
order, harmony, keeping one's proper place. 
It was the desire to make himself more capable 
of imparting which misled the original man. 

It was a mistake. It was a forgetfulness. 
He did not consider that no matter how large 
and luminous the orb, out of its place it cannot 
be beautiful but must always be otherwise, and 
that the greater the mass and the more powerful 
the heat of any sun, the more frightfully de- 
structive must that body be when once displaced, 
that then it goes sinking down the universe and 
dragging other orbs from their orbits. 

The very moment man stepped from his 
place he made the discovery that he had lost 
what he had had by seeking what he should not 



have. He was in disorder. Discord set in. 
He was out of harmony. Beauty was lost. He 
could not give so much as formerly, because he 
had sustained such a fearful loss. He was be- 
coming miserable and more miserable. The 
conscious possession of beauty is a pleasure. 
The burn, the wound, the cutaneous disease 
which spoils complexion or feature or sym- 
metry, takes away happiness with beauty. The 
moment the original mistake was made and the 
first false step was taken, self-love showed the 
first symptom of the disorder. Self-love began 
to be inordinate, that is, to become selfishness. 
Man began to have wrong views of God. Before 
this dire mistake God was to him the Father of 
all order, goodness, beauty. God was the cen- 
tral fount of all the streams of beauty that 
flowed through the universe, a Being of un- 
appeasable, exhaustless, infinite, perfect love, 
the reproduction of whose unselfish love in the 
constitution of man was man's greatest glory 
and delight. 

Now, this same God, who had not at all 
changed, had become frightful to man. The 
very first confession of the loss of his crown was 
man's reply extorted by the presence of the 
Heavenly Father, " I was afraid." 

It is never to be forgotten that we are to re- 
ceive life and give life, and that this distribution 
of life is one of the elements of beauty, and 
that we cannot receive this life in order to dis- 
tribute it, unless we be in our place, and this is 
the other element of beauty. The harmonious 
reception and distribution, through all animate 
and inanimate creation, of that life which flows 
from the Fount of Life which is in God, would 
bring the universe into the perfection of all 
beauty. The moment self-love becomes inor- 
dinate it is like the closing up of the orifices 
through which the blood of the life of God is to 
pass through one to another, as through the 
heart of a body the blood passes into other por- 
tions of the body. 

To bring man back to his place and to reopen 
all the closed ducts through which the life of 
God is to flow into his soul and he is to pour 
spiritual life upon others, would be the great 
work of salvation, and when accomplished it 
would lift man up from the worthlessness and 
ugliness of ashes into beauty. So, beauty is 
really a fair synonym for salvation. 

How could a heart of infinite love find a better 
way to create a new and immense attraction to 
draw man back to his place than by an incarna- 
tion in which a man should exhibit the love of a 
God by human sufferings and outpour of him- 



Beauty for Ashes. 



self so solitary, so lofty, so surpassing the sus- 
picion that they could be in any wise selfish, so 
enriching him who received rather than him 
who gave, that all the world would feel that God 
was in it, that nothing done by man had broken 
God's love, that still He stood in His place and 
was the Fount of every blessing. 

Men may criticize the narrated facts of Christ's 
human history, but I appeal to their souls and 
to yours, and to my own soul. When destruc- 
tive criticism has done its worst with Hebrew 
text and Greek, and all the cherished forms of a 
human life have been stripped from us, is there 
not still in every human soul, in its inmost re- 
cesses, a cry for the lost beauty, a cry to be 
back in our own place, a cry so pitiable, so lone, 
so indescribably pathetic, that it must penetrate 
the ear and move the heart of the good God. 
And will He not long for us? And will He not 
seek to restore us ? 

Human nature demands an incarnation of 
God. And will He not incarnate Himself and 
stand out before us in the shape of some man 
who shall rigidly stand to his place as fixed as 
God and pour his whole self out as God does 
His ? No other man but Jesus ever did that. 
Jesus did it. He never for an instant in any 
wise broke away from the harmony of the uni- 
verse. His life was perfect when measured by 
the lines of the law. We cannot conceive that 
Almighty God could live thirty years in human 
flesh a life more holy than that of Jesus. He 
never ceased giving. He gave all — time, power, 
ease, love, life, body, and soul, in perfect and 
sublime self-abnegation and utter consecration 
to the race. He is the most beautiful thought 
possible to man. It seems now as if the Incar- 
nation was one of the blessed necessities o\ infi- 
nite love. Christ is lifted up. He draws all 
men unto Himself. Once ;n harmony with all 
that is right and good in the universe we begin 
to imitate the outpouring of life which made the 
life of Jesus so completely beautiful. 

It is thus that He gives us beauty for ashes. 
The coming back to our place and receiving and 
giving the divine life is a restoration from ashes 
to beauty. 

And now, dear brethren, this is the gift which 
Jesus offers. Will you have it ? Will you rise 
or will you grovel ? There is only one way of 
receiving this great gift. If you love Him you 
will keep His commandments. The way of obe- 
dience is the way back from ashes to beauty. It 
is only a life formed on the two commandments, 
" Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy 



mind," and " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself," that can rise into beauty. Through no 
other form of living can the life of God be 
found. Every other life is closed on both sides, 
the sides of receiving and of giving. 

To make an earnest effort to do your duty m 
every department and exigency of life, giving 
yourself back to God and out to man, is to be- 
come holy, is to be a saint. To all such God 
reveals Himself. " If any man desires to do 
His will he shall know of the doctrine whether it 
be of God," said Jesus. And Paul said, " The 
mystery which has been hid from ages and gen- 
erations now is made manifest to His saints, to 
whom God would make known what is the 
riches of the glory of this mystery.!' " The 
beauty of holiness" is the ardent outpouring of 
an unselfish soul. Even the blessed God can- 
not give you beauty out of this order. All 
earth and hell cannot take it away if you stand 
in this order. 

Think what a world of beauty our human 
society would be if every man and woman were 
living thus, each taking all possible inflowing of 
the life of God, each giving to all that same 
blessed life. A simple performance of duty on 
the part of everv man would change the dullness 
of this poor earth into a Paradise of delights. 
The leading of an unselfish and orderly life 
would impart loveliness to everything. Each 
act the most menial, every station the most 
lowly, every occuoation from the veriest drudg- 
ery to the rule of princes, would brighten into 
beauty. Wherever we turned our eyes we 
should have sent back to us a sight of humanity 
which would five us disinterested delight. The 
nights would be filled with music and the days 
with manly delights and heavenly serenity. The 
saharas of the heart, burnt to dust and ashes by 
fiery passions and swept and tossed by fierce 
winds, would begin to bloom like the garden of 
the Lord. Everywhere beauty would supplant 
ashes. 

But let us not be carried by this vision of 
loveliness from the practical work before each 
soul of us. " My mind to me a kingdom is;" 
but if that kingdom be in dire disorder, I can 
have nothing but wretchedness. And the' whole 
empire of humanity is made up of all these 
little kingdoms. Each must separately be re- 
deemed from ashes to beauty, and then the reign 
of beauty will be universal. 

Is your inner man, your kingdom of the soul 
in this condition of order ? Are you a fountain 
of blessings to others ? If not, then selfishness 
has conquered your love for the Heavenly 



Beauty for Ashes. 



Father. You are suffering the tremendous and 
painful reversal in your nature which sin has 
wrought. You never can reverse the plans of 
God. Even God cannot do that, because His 
original plan is perfect. Your life is a conflict 
with the universal law. You are self-centred, 
self-idolatrous, self-destroyed ! Life is to you 
ashes. You sit down in the solitude of your 
own heart and find yourself sitting in the midst 
of ashes. You rush out to play, to work, to 
plan, to execute. You plunge into trade, into 
politics, into science, into society. You fail: 
and failure is ashes. You succeed : and success 
is ashes. You follow up revelry to its close, and 
find your eyes and mouth and heart filled with 
ashes. You accumulate moneys, acres, houses, 
ships, roads, all varieties of material possessions, 
and they are ashes. You acquire power, so that 
touching a bell in your chamber you can send 
any man from the extremities of the continent 
to the Bastile or to Siberia, and your throne is 
to you a heap of ashes. You fill your mind with 
all the ancient lore and modern discoveries, and 
it is all ashes. Society, bright women, and gifted 
men, seem so fascinating: you pluck the fair 
fruit of this tree and it turns to ashes in your 
teeth. You strike the strings of the harp of 
the heart and all peoples give response: but 
fame is ashes to you. 

O my brother, in an empire of reciprocal 
uses, the little kingdom of your heart is seeking 
to appropriate everything and to give nothing. 
Hence your misery. This is what the Word of 
God calls " sowing to the flesh." When a man 
receives that he may give and gives with no 
selfish hope of return, that is what the Scripture 
calls " sowing to the spirit." ''Be not de- 
ceived : God is not mocked : whatsoever a man 
soweth that shall he also reap. He that soweth 
to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption. 
He that soweth to the spirit shall of the spirit 
reap life everlasting." 

There is only one way from ashes to beauty. 
Christ says " I am the way." Christ says " The 
Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the 
Lord hath anointed ??te to give unto the mourn- 
ers in Zion beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for 
mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit 
of heaviness." He is called The Christ be- 



cause He has been anointed, that is, set apart, 
for that work. There can be no vision granted 
to Faith or to Fancy more ecstatic than a view 
of the completion of this great work of Jesus 
the Christ. The conquest of selfishness, the 
rectification of the reversals of sin, the orderly 
healthfulness of the whole system, the perpetual 
inflowing and outflowing of the stream of life 
through all parts of the universe must be the 
longing of every regenerate heart. How much 
more must it be the desire of God ! We see 
how in nature He is perpetually giving beauty 
for ashes, raising forms and colors the loveliest 
from the disintegrations and corruptions of ma- 
terial substances. This is an intimation of what 
He can do. Our hope for the resurrection of 
our bodies is placed on no scientific knowledge 
of natural laws, but on the exertion of His great 
power. He "shall change our vile body that 
it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, 
according to the working whereby He is able 
even to subdue all things unto Himself." 

Will He not go on and on? Is He not the 
Christ for this purpose ? Yes, He will. The 
time shall come when He will have given beauty 
for ashes to all the material universe. His 
power is over that. Great cataclysms of floods 
and flames may sweep the created world, but 
the cycles of eternity are measuring the march 
of the universe through ashes to beauty. Every 
human soul that submits to love's great law shall 
live, and for all the ashes which result from the 
burning of its idol it shall receive immortal 
beauty. These are they that mourn in Zion; 
and they shall put off sackcloth of heaviness and 
put on garments of praise. But to all them who 
do not thus mourn, their selfishness shall be 
ashes, ashes and nothing but ashes, ashes and 
nothing but ashes forever. O dread and dreary 
doom. God help us. We do not wish to live 
forever in the desolation of the extinct volcanoes 
of hearts and souls. Save us, O Christ ! Up 
from our ashes, from under the ashes of humili- 
ation which oversDread us, we stretch our hands, 
all defiled with ashes, and we pray for beauty, 
for divine order in our souls, for divine unself- 
ishness in our lives. O beautify us with Thy 
salvation, Thou who hast been anointed to give 
to the mourners in Zion beauty for ashes. 



XIX. 

P H js 1 1 x g. 

•* THE MYSTERY WHICH HATH BEEN HID FROM AGES, AND FROM GENERATIONS, BUT NOW 
IS MADE MANIFEST TO HIS SAINTS: TO WHOM GOD WOULD MAKE KNOWN WHAT IS THE 
RICHES OF THE GLORY OF THIS MYSTERY." — COLOSSIANS, I, 26, 27. 



It is a matter of surprise how much " mystery" 
stands in the way of men when they come to 
consider religion, and how little account they 
take of it in other departments of thought and 
activity. 

When men are pursuing any scientific in- 
vestigation which concerns itself with the phe- 
nomena of animal life, and come up to some 
fact the existence of which, under the circum- 
stances, is unaccountable, the connection of 
which with the universal order of things is in- 
scrutable, they sit down and rest themselves on 
the statement that this cannot be explained in 
the present state of science / 

When scientific men are investigating the 
workings of human intellect, the laws of mind, 
the phenomena of thought, and come upon 
some mental operation which seems to involve 
an insoluble difficulty, they do not clothe them- 
selves with humility, but coolly repose on .their 
old statement that these things cannot be ex- 
plained in the present state of science / 

All this seems to mean that some things are 
understood now which were not understood 
heretofore, and that hereafter men will under- 
stand many things which they do not now even 
apprehend; and it seems to intimate also that 
science is capable of doing everything if you 
will give science time enough. 

The first of these is manifestly true, the 
second has so strong a ground of probability 
that we presume it to be quite certain, but the 
third is the mere assumption of a self-conceit 
which is highly unscientific. 

But what does all our science show us ? It 
shows that there has always been mystery in 
every department of creation. It establishes 
the probability that there always will be mystery 
in every department of human investigation. It 
demonstrates that that may be a mystery in one 
age which is not at all mysterious in another, and 
that that may be a mystery to one mind which 
is no mystery to another. 

Will there never cease to be mysteries? 



None but the infinite God can give positive 
answer to that question. But we can reach an 
answer which is so probable that we can scarcely 
discover a difference between that amount of 
probability and a well-assumed certainty. 

In the first place there are abundant evidences 
that the greatest human mind is finite, and if 
a mind be not infinite it cannot inclose, it can- 
not comprehend every possible thing that has 
bounds and limits, that is, every finite thing. 
Whatever is not throughly and utterly known is 
a mystery. 

Tacitus says that the ancient Germans were 
very superstitious and took everything that was 
unknown to them as a marvel and a mystery, 
omne ignotum fro mirifico. Well, does not 
even the most scientific mind do the same 
thing ? The difference between the savages 
that originally inhabited the German forests and 
their highly-cultivated descendents, is that the 
former let the unknown thing remain unknown, 
and the longer it was unknown the more mar- 
vellous it became, and the more settled became 
their conviction that the thing could never be 
known ; while the modern thinker sets himself 
to the work of finding the thread which con- 
nects this marvel with the already ascertained 
laws of the universe, or to use it, in connection 
with other facts, for the discovery of some other 
law. 

But there is this other thing which has marked 
every step of the progress of science : the solu- 
tion of one mystery has been the discovery of 
another and a greater mystery. A line of hills 
has seemed to bound our world, and a view from 
the top of that has promised us a sight of the 
beyond, and when we have climbed to it, we 
have seen Alps on Alps, in endless chains and 
ranges of mountains. Therefore, such men as 
Locke in the department of intellectual science, 
and of Faraday in the department of physical 
science, have died feeling that they were chil- 
dren gathering pebbles on the shore of an 
ocean which contained immeasurable treasures. 



Mystery. 



117 



The work of men of science has been to find 
a key to a locked box. They at last opened it. 
But it contained another box with a different 
lock, and a second key has had to be found. 
When that was secured and the second box was 
opened, lo ! it contained a third. Each suc- 
cessive lock has been more difficult to open than 
its predecessor, and each new opening now 
reveals another locked box. In solving myste- 
ries we do not get rid of mystery. Is there no 
unanswered question in mental philosophy which 
really seems unanswerable ? In physical sci- 
ence is there nothing which yet defies the per- 
sistent labor and trained skill of our philoso- 
phers ? Have we touched bottom with our 
geology, and reached the outposts of creation 
with our astronomy ? 

We have had the atomic theory of light. 
Now we have the undulatory or vibratory theory. 
We have made great discoveries in correlations 
of forces, and become able to explain many 
things after finding that heat is a mode of motion ; 
but what a mystery yet is the ether, or medium 
through which the results of the vibration of 
atoms are propagated through the universe ! 
We have satisfied ourselves that when any mo- 
tion is impeded, that motion is converted into 
heat, as when a cannon ball hits a target it 
becomes hissing hot. We suppose also that 
science has shown that this is only a change of 
the mode of motion, not a change of motion to 
something else. The motion of the mass is 
converted into a motion of the atoms of the 
mass, and, it is said, that these small motions 
communicated to the nerves produce the sensa- 
tion of heat. It it very easy to write that or to 
speak it, and I believe that it is all true. But 
does that end all the mystery of heat ? Sup- 
pose I should have asked the late Professor Far- 
aday, or should ask the living Professor Tyndall, 
or my friend Professor Stone. th<? following 
questions : How is the motion of the mass 
converted into the motion of the atoms ? and, 
How is the motion of the atoms communicated 
to the nerves? and, How does this commu- 
nicated atomic motion enable the nerves to 
impart to the mind the sensation of heat ? Would 
not those learned and modest gentlemen see 
that every time I said "How" I pointed to a 
chasm of measureless depth, a chasm not yet 
bridged by man ? And could not any thought- 
ful child have asked Humboldt more questions 
in an hour than he and all the scientific men on 
earth could answer in a century ? They would 
say, " I do not know ; it is yet a mystery." 
And look what words we use in science to 



express inconceivable ideas. Take the atomic 
theory. It teaches that all matter consists of 
particles so smalf that they cannot be made 
smaller. If any matter can be conceived to be 
smaller, then that is not an atom. As we can- 
not think of matter without dimensions, it follows 
that an atom is an inconceivable thing. Re- 
ligion asks men to believe in nothing more 
mysterious than an atom of matter. And yet 
scientific men are all the week coolly teaching 
the mysteries of the material world to the young 
gentlemen in their classes and then decline to 
come to hear us, gospel teachers, because we 
teach them and their scholars the mysteries of 
religion ; and decline simply on the ground that 
what we teach is mystery. The professor even 
undertakes to weigh atoms, and to count them, 
and thus has there been introduced into chem- 
istry a nomenclature of marvellous usefulness, 
and theories that are almost poetically beautiful. 
But does he not see that he is soon met by a 
"mystery." He believes that divisibility is an 
essential of matter. He defines matter, "any 
thing which has extension." Then it is divisi- 
ble. But one of the highest scientific authori- 
ties says, " The view most consistent with 
chemical facts and theories is that there is a 
limit to the divisibility of matter, and to that 
limit the term ato?n [an indivisible particle] is 
applied. It is believed that at this point matter 
is no longer divisible. What that limit is cannot 
be defined, and it is unnecessary for practical 
purposes to inquire." 

Just study those sentences. To keep the 
known facts of chemistry in consistent order we 
must believe what no man can prove, that there 
is a limit to the divisibility of matter, and we 
must believe that that which is no matter, 
because indivisible, is the foundation, the foun- 
tain, the elementary beginning of the whole 
material universe. Does religion ask you to 
believe anything more mysterious than that? 
And yet you and I and Draper and Brande 
and Tyndall, all believe these things. When we 
are speaking of what we can see, we do not 
think it disgraces us as scientific thinkers to say, 
"What that limit is cannot be defined, and it is 
unnecessary for practical purposes to inquire." 
Yet we demand of teachers of religion that they 
shall never make such admission, or if they do } 
we say that that is sufficient reason for rejecting 
religion. 

But then there is another curious mystery 
which meets us in scientific research. We 
thought we had reached the bottom, but not so. 
We have found that compounds consist of ele- 



118 



Mystery. 



ments combined in a fixed proportion as to 
number of atoms and as to weight. Thus water 
is oxygen and hydrogen in combination ; in vol- 
ume, one of oxygen and two of hydrogen; in 
weight, nearly eighty-eight and three-quarters of 
oxygen to eleven and one-tenth of hydrogen. 
Now, as these atoms are changeless as to size, 
because they cannot become smaller, being indi- 
visible, and the moment they become larger they 
cease to be atoms, it would seem to follow that 
whenever the same elements come together in the 
same proportion of weight and of number of 
atoms, the same compound would always be pro- 
duced. But it is not so. Sugar and starch are 
identical in their elements : so are the oil of 
turpentine and the oil of lemons. Behold ! a 
mystery ! Can we do anything with this "mys- 
tery ?" Yes. Upon studying these substances we 
make discoveries which show that this difference 
is due to the grouping of the atoms. Well, that 
is one step forward. But here is another " mas- 
tery." To what is this " grouping" due? We 
do not know "in the present state of science." 
It is a " mystery." 

Now, dear brethren, what must we do ? Give 
up all science and all scientific research ? Not 
at all. The few facts in the history of science 
which I have presented you to-day are simply 
to show you that mystery exists everywhere and 
its existence is an objection to nothing. 

In Draper's or Brande's chemistry, or any 
other, there are as many mysteries as in the 
Bible. 

There are two classes of men that act foolishly: 
one who hold to science with its mysteries and 
reject religion because of its mysteries ; the other 
who hold to religion with its mysteries and re- 
ject science because of its mysteries. There is one 
class who are all madmen, namely, those who 
give up both science and religion because they 
are both mysterious. There is only one class 
who act in such a way as to preserve their own 
respect and get all the good of all the world, 
namely, those who take both religion and science 
with all their mystery. 

What is there frightful in mystery ? What is 
a mystery ? It is merely a fact or law not now 
known to us, but known to some other mind, or 
capable of being known by our mind or some 
other's. That is all there is of it. And you see 
that the mystery is not in the thing studied: it 
is in you, it is in me. It is simply the limit of 
our knowledge. It is simply the measure of our 
ignorance. You may extend the limit of knowl- 
edge indefinitely : you can even render knowl- 
edge infinite. It will therefore have a limit. 



The outward limit of our knowledge rests on the 
inward limit of mystery. You may reduce the 
circle of ignorance, shrinking its circumference by 
diminishing its radius; but you can never make 
that circle disappear by making centre and cir- 
cumference identical. Large or little, that circle 
of ignorance is full of mystery. 

We must accept mystery, therefore, as we ac- 
cept consciousness and finiteness, as being a 
part of our existence. But we are not to settle 
down in apathy. A mystery is a thing covered. 
That is all. The moment we lift the cover that 
thing ceases to be a mystery. We must lift the 
cover, even if we thus discover another mystery. 
That is the work set before the human intellect. 
A discoverer is one who finds a mystery. An 
inventor is one who learns how to make instru- 
ments which shall aid discoverers in finding 
mysteries. 

Is it endless ? 

Yes. 

And hopeless ? 
No. 

It is very hopeful. If it were not endless it 
would be every moment approaching nearer and 
nearer to hopelessness. 

Science and Religion is as one. All true 
science is religious, all true religion is scientific. 
See what is done in science. As soon as a fact 
is ascertained, there is an effort to learn the law 
which governs the fact. As soon as a law is 
understood, there is an effort to ''make it good 
in fact." The former is theory, the latter ex- 
periment, and the application of both to prac- 
tical purposes is practical science. There must 
be theory and there must be experiment. 
Theory will excite to experiment, experiment 
will end in theory. It is so in religion as 
it is in science, if there be any difference 
between them. There is as much progress in 
what we call religion as in what we call science. 
What is a mystery in one age of the world is 
not a mystery in another. What was a mystery 
to Adam was plain to Moses, and what was a 
mystery to Moses was manifest to Paul, and 
what was incomprehensible to Paul is known to 
many an unknown child of God in this age. 

The science of religion no more stops than 
the science of nature. It is every man's duty 
to do all he can to extend the knowledge of 
mankind in both departments. It is thus that 
each man stands on the shoulders of him who 
went before, and the horizon of humanity is 
widened, so that the modern Charles Wesley 
can sing as known what Isaiah and David 
harped as a mystery. 



Mystery. 



119 



Then, is not truth fixed and invariable ? Cer- 
tainly ; but we are not and our knowledge is not. 
From the same truth stated in the same way, 
written in the same letters, printed with the 
same ink and same type, two men gather two 
different things. Is not nature fixed and in- 
variable ? Have the so-called physical laws 
ever been changed in any particular since the 
creation of the world, sr far as we can see ? 
Never. And yet are n^t Botany, Chemistry, 
Zoology, and Astronomy modern sciences, and 
a thousand years to come will not our descend- 
ents know vastly more of all these sciences 
than we do ? And shall we say that all prog- 
ress in religion stopped when Moses went up 
into the mount to die, having given the moral 
law on tables of stone, or when David ceased to 
sing songs of holy praise to tunes of solemn 
sound, or when Isaiah's fire-touched lips shut 
themselves in the silence of death, or when 
Paul ceased writing what Peter never ceased 
to consider things hard to be understood, or 
when John's eyes beheld the Apocalyptic vision 
shining over the sea and Patmos ? 

The earth is the same, and the Bible is the 
same in all ages, but science and religion must 
make progress. This is what Paul believed. A 
mystery had been hid for generations and ages, 
but in his day it had been uncovered. We live 
eighteen centuries after Paul, and there are 
mysteries which still exist in religion. Shall 
they not be uncovered? Shall we cease to 
study them ? We may make many mistakes, 
and mistakes that to our descendents may 
appear as ridiculous as the experiments of the 
alchemist and the doctrines of the Rosicrusians 
do now to us. But how useful were those then 
apparently fruitless efforts to discover the phi- 
losopher's stone which should transmute base 
metals into gold, and the elixir vitce which 
should supply the fluid of physical immortal- 
ity. From those toils we have our modern 
chemistry. 

I believe that good will come of even all the 
blunderings of honest Roman Catholics and 
Protestant Catholics, of Unitarians and Trini- 
tarians, of Calvinists and Arminians, of Sweden- 
borgians and Spiritualists, and even of our 
forlorn brethren who are trying to become 
orphans by striving to be atheists, striving to be 
rid of the trouble of uncovering mysteries by 
endeavoring to prove that they do not exist. 

What was this special mystery of which Paul 
speaks ? It was this. 

God had an elect people. He always has 
had. There is always some nation doing special 



service to humanity for God. Not that all the 
other nations were not his children as well. 
Not that all the individuals of the elect nation 
were good children of God, or distinguished 
above the individuals of other nations by any 
partiality whatever. The Heavenly Father most 
expressly disclaims that. He is no respecter of 
persons. His offers of grace and opportunities 
of salvation are tendered to all alike, and re- 
sponsibility is most strictly adjusted to the make, 
up of the constitution and history of the indi- 
vidual soul. The Lord is not " an austere man, 
reaping what He had not sown." But the 
Father has a right to select among His chil- 
dren those who shall do any special work. The 
Jewish nation had been selected for a special 
work. This puffed them up. They despised 
others who were as good as they by reason of 
natural constitution and of the law of God. 
But they considered themselves the people. 
They were the elect. All others were repro- 
bates. They were holy. All others were sinners, 
outside nations, " Gentiles." 

And so shrunken and bigotted had the He- 
brew mind become that to most of them nothing 
seemed to be religion but bigotry. How could 
God love more than one people at a time ? And 
were not they the beloved people? All others, 
therefore, must be hated peoples. So they rea- 
soned. But why the other peoples should exist 
at all, was one of the inscrutable permissions of 
Divine Providence. 

And then there were forced upon them, so 
that they could not a^oid seeing them and pon- 
dering them, certPin facts in the moral history 
of these barbarians, pagans, heathens, " gen- 
tiles," which was a my.teiy hidden from them, 
as it had been hidden from their fathers " from 
ages and from generations." 

Here is one of them. In the time of Jesus 
this elect people of God were a subjugated na- 
tion. The Romans ruled them. The Romans 
were uncircumcised pagans, who had no share 
in the covenant of grace. They were very gross 
polytheists. But the literature of these idolaters 
revealed several things to the Jewish mind. It 
showed an early history of virtue so self-continent 
and self-denying that it rivalled the sublimest 
characteristics of their grandest prophets and 
holiest saints. It showed some essays in ethics 
which were no mean echoes to men's consciences 
of Sinai's trumpet-peal. All this was a mystery. 

The literature o f Greece had been brought 
under the inspection of the Jewish intellect. 
The Greeks were an active yet sensuous people ; 
and they were idolaters, " aliens from the Com- 



120 



Mystery. 



monwealth of Israel." Their writings showed 
a marvellous desire to know what things were 
good. Their prophets stood on lifted heights 
and saw goodly lands afar off. To their seers 
there seemed to have been granted visions of most 
holy heavens. All this was a mystery. 

And now, at the date of the birth of Jesus, 
something of the same kind of thing was forced 
upon the Jewish attention from a new quarter. 
As the Romans were holding them in subjection 
so the Parthians were holding the Persians, 
occupying their country, and deriving revenues 
from them without unnecessarily disturbing their 
social and national arrangements. These con- 
quered Persians were never under Roman rule. 
These conquering Parthians were dangerously 
near the eastern limit of the Roman power, and 
had already come in conflict with it. They 
were dreaded. When Jesus was born there 
came three of the Persian great men of the holy 
caste, Magi, under the protection of the Par- 
thian power, which Herod feared. They were 
supposed to be strangers to the covenant of 
promise. Their mission was purely religious. 
They believed in the supernatural. They had 
been guided by a star, as they believed preter- 
naturally. As Simeon and Anna had been 
waiting among the Jews for " the Consolation 
of Israel," so it appeared that these great men 
had been waiting for the Consolation of Hu- 
manity. And they did not believe that He, 
whoever He was, must necessarily come of their 
nation. He might be born among the Jews, 
who were more despicable in their eyes, if pos- 
sible, than they were in Jewish estimation. 
These men were devout. They were ready to 
follow God's leading to the world's end. This 
was a very great mystery. 

Is it not deeply interesting to watch the pro- 
cess of the uncovering of a mystery which had 
been hid from Hebrew, Persian, Parthian, Greek, 
and Roman vision, and which was now to be 
unveiled at the cradle of a new-born child? 
Jesus clears this mystery, and reveals the ex- 
istence of other mysteries. " The hope of glory" 
was not a peculiarity of the Hebrew mind and 
heart. The whole world longed for a better 
estate. All men are God's children. By the 
Euphrates, by the Jordan, by the Tiber, by the 
Peneus, men had longed for the river whose 
streams make glad the city of God. And now 
the "Desire of Nations" had appeared. And 
now all people trying to be good were to know 
that this " hope of glory" " among the Gentiles" 
was " Christ in them" all. Jesus did this work 
for the world, making the people know one 



another and serve God. Jesus uncovered this 
mystery. 

All things are plain to those who have been 
taught the explanation. Men now under-rate 
the work of our adorable Saviour, because the 
world has become familiar with the ideas that 
God has made of one blood all the nations 
under the heavens, that all men are His children, 
that His grace is everywhere, that the institu- 
tions He erects for one people do not compel 
Him to select the same in the moral education 
of another. Millions of men now "of a truth 
perceive that God is no respecter of persons; 
but in every nation he that feareth Him and 
worketh righteousness is accepted of Him." 
But there was no mind that perceived that until 
Jesus came. It is as nothing to take a vessel 
across the Atlantic now; but what a thing the 
first voyage was ! 

When the light came to Paul and he saw that 
all men might indulge the hope of glory, and 
that it was Christ in the circumcised and uncir- 
cumcised, Christ in Isaiah and Plato and Cicero, 
Christ in Moses and Zoroaster, when this light 
flashed down on the earth and covered the 
world and gilded the hoary Past, a key to the 
hieroglyphics of God in the history of humanity, 
Paul shouted "glory." And when he more 
and more studied what Jesus had always been 
doing for the race, he cried out, " the riches of 
the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles is 
Christ in them, the hope of glory." 

And now, brethren, I beseech you to believe 
that our Heavenly Father is not trifling with us, 
is not merely exciting our curiosity. There is 
nothing hidden which will not be in proper time 
and manner revealed to the proper persons. 
" It is the will of God to make known mysteries" 
both in the physical and spiritual world. 

But there is only one way in which it can be 
done, and to people only in one condition of 
soul. They are called experimental philoso- 
phers in science. They are called "saints' in 
religion. Who are saints? Those who are 
trying to be good. Who are trying to be good ? 
Those who bend their powers to the observance 
of God's laws for the soul as well as His laws 
for the body. How are men to know whether 
a theory be correct? By experiment, trying, 
doing the thing. How are men to know of the 
doctrine whether it be of God? By doing His 
will. 

It is surprising that men of science should ridi- 
cule "experimental religion" and consider the 
very phrase to be cant, when they are all the 
while insisting upon experimental science. It 



Mystery. 



121 



shows how narrow is their science. They have not 
carried it out to the largest generalization, so as 
to cover the universe of mind and matter. They 
are tyros beside whom Paul and John and the 
humblest " saint" are experts. 

There cannot be revelations to bad men, any 
more than sights to the blind and sounds to the 
deaf. The entrances are closed by sin. 

There can be no high level of theoretic sci- 
ence to a people who are not practical workers. 
It was not a very scientific mind that invented 
the steam-engine, nor was that mind largely 
stored with science. But it was practical. And 
see how the steam-engine has lifted science, as 
well as done the mechanical drudgery of the 
world. If the steam-engine had not been 
invented we should never have seen those 
achievements of heat which have suggested 
questions, the solution of which is letting us 
into some of the inner mysteries of the universe. 
The ablest theoretic philosophers in the depart- 
ment of physics are the readiest to acknowledge 
the real triumphs of practical skill. 

It must be so in religion. You have been in 
your closet pondering mysteries. You have 
opened the Bible and pondered its mysteries, 
creation, inspiration, the incarnation, regenera- 
tion, the resurrection, the connections of the 
material and the spiritual sides of nature. You 
are all in a puzzle. You cannot see how Jesus 
can be at once divine and human. You have 
a long catalogue of these mysteries. You are 
growing bewildered. You read novels. You 
go to your pastor. You submit your puzzles to 
him and ask him what they mean, and he, if 
he be great enough to be modest and faithful, 
says. " I don't know." 

What are you to do ? Quit your abstract 
thinking and go to work. Leave your study and 



go into the laboratory and try it, try it by this 
test and by that. Make practical use of what 
you do know. Utilize your present knowledge. 
Then you shall know more. 

If men had declined to make a steam-engine 
until they understood heat, they never would 
have had an engine, and never had the knowl- 
edge of heat. So, you. Be good. Pray. Cherish 
lovingest thoughts of God. Cherish charitable 
views of men. Be true. Be brave. Be hon- 
est. Do not have morbid desires. You now 
know all you need to know. It would be terri- 
ble to know more and not do more. 

Be a saint, that is, try to be good. You will 
succeed, and then a wonder will occur; you will 
find that work brings knowledge more swiftly 
than idle dreaming. You will find that the 
warmth of your heart heats your head, and 
light will come. 

O believe that " it is the will of God to make 
known mysteries." If anything which we ought 
to know remains a mystery, it is because we are 
bad ; and if you and I die skeptics, it will be 
because of the darkness of our hearts, for 
" with the heart man believeth unto righteous- 
ness." 

The eyes which see through what are mys- 
teries hidden to the mind are the eyes of the 
heart. There is no other mystery to love greater 
than the one sweet mystery of loving. 



[Note. — The reader of this discourse is rec- 
ommended to examine a very remarkable book 
by Dr. Francis W. Upham, published by Shel- 
don & Co., New York, entitled The Wise Men: 
who they were, and how they ca7?ie to Jeru- 
salem .1 



XX. 

" HE SHALL SEE OF THE TRAVAIL OF HIS SOUL, AND SHALL BE SATISFIED."— ISAIAH, LTII. II. 



Jesus of Nazareth had been crucified, dead, 
and buried. He had arisen from the dead. He 
had ascended into heaven. 

The day of Pentecost had passed, and the 
disciples of Jesus had received the baptism of 
the Holy Ghost, and were preaching the gospel 
of the resurrection and of salvation through 
Jesus. In the history of their labors was a pas- 
sage of idyllic beauty, preserved in the eighth 
chapter of the Acts. 

Philip was moved by the Holy Spirit to go 
down from Jerusalem southward by a deserted 
road which led toward Gaza. He went, not 
knowing why, except that he was under a divine 
impulse. As he journeyed, he beheld a stranger 
riding in a chariot. This traveller was a noble- 
man, a high officer in the court of Candace, 
queen of Ethiopia. He had been up to Jerusalem. 

It was an epoch of spiritual activity among 
leading men. The Magi had come to Jerusa- 
lem, at the birth of Jesus, from the far East. 
This nobleman had come, after the death of 
Jesus, from the far South. Here is another 
illustration of the truth presented in last Sunday 
morning's sermon, that "the hope of glory" 
was not confined to the Hebrews. Jesus was 
drawing the nations together. The Holy Spirit 
of the Eternal God, everywhere present, moves 
upon the minds of men of all nations, if those 
men are striving to be good. Here was a pagan, 
of high rank in his own country, whose inquir- 
ing mind had led him to investigate the religion 
of Judaism, and whose search after the truth 
had led him to accept the fundamental princi- 
ples of Judaism as sound. His interest in the 
religion of the Jews had brought him to the 
Holy City te to behold the beauty of the Lord 
and to inquire in His temple." He was return- 
ing to his own country, and was reading one of 
the sacred books of the Jewish fcith. It was 
the prophecy of Isaiah. 

The Spirit of God inclined Philip to speak to 
him. He ran up to the chariot. The noble- 
man was reading aloud, and perhaps slowly. 



It was this very chapter which contains our text. 
He seemed to be pondering these most re- 
markable statements. His very tones, perhaps, 
betrayed his mental puzzle. Philip modestly 
said to him: "Do you understand that which 
you are reading?" 

The nobleman replied: " How can I, except 
some man should guide me?" 

So intent was he on spiritual knowledge that, 
although Philip was a total stranger to him, he 
invited him up into the chariot, because he had 
taken interest in his religious studies. Then 
Philip carefully and solemnly expounded to him 
the Gospel of Jesus in this prophecy of Isaiah, 
and the man who was probably striving to be- 
come a Jewish proselyte became a Christian 
convert. He discovered the mystery which had 
been hid from generations, the riches of the 
glory of that mystery among the Gentiles, 
namely, Christ in him the hope of glory. 

It is thus that the Holy Spirit of God gives us 
the key to this remarkable chapter. It was 
locked to the Ethiopian nobleman until Philip 
told him that the prophet was not speaking of 
himself but of some other man, and that that 
other man was Jesus of Nazareth. 

And now go back and read this chapter in 
Isaiah, and then read the Gospels, and then 
recollect that the former was written nearly 
twenty-six centuries ago, and the latter about 
eighteen centuries ago, and that between them 
there was a space of time equal to that which 
separates to-day from the day that William the 
Conqueror was crowned, and it appears mar- 
vellous. The words of Isaiah seem to be as 
historical as those of Luke. The prophet treats 
Jesus with the same reverent tenderness as the 
historian. Both carry us to the cross, to the 
sufferings of Jesus, to the judgment-hall, the 
place of execution, the agony, the death, and 
the moral triumph that followed. In the case 
of no other man did these things predicted by 
Isaiah come to pass. They were all fulfilled in 
Jesus. 



What Jesus saw from the Cross. 12 S 



This special passage which we have selected to- 
day points to the intense sufferings of Christ and 
the satisfying vision which comforted Him in the 
hour and power of darkness. May the Spirit of 
God, who enlightened Philip while he expound- 
ed this passage to the Ethiopian nobleman, help 
me to expound it to you. 

There has always seemed to me to be a pro- 
found interest in the question how the transac- 
tion of the Cross impreseed the persons imme- 
diately concerned, being present on the spot at 
the time. Let us see if we can carry ourselves 
back to that most remarkable of all historical 
groups. 

First of all there were the chiefs of the Jews, 
who had regarded Jesus as a dangerous man — 
dangerous to their hierarchy by reason of His 
constant pressure against churchism, the width 
of His views, and His unsparing denunciations 
of the priestly vices; and dangerous because 
of probable political results from the course of 
life which He was pursuing. Under the Roman 
rule they might keep their place and nation, 
and they were so debased that they preferred to 
having their ease in degradation to losing their 
comforts in an attempt to set their people free. 

To them His death was a relief. It was an 
enemy safely put out of the way. There might 
be quiet again, and the Temple-service go for- 
ward, and the ecclesiastical affairs of the nation 
be carried on in quiet. The terrible phenomena 
which attended His crucifixion must have given 
them great anxiety ; but the darkness passed 
away, the earthquake subsided, and the mum- 
bling priests went forward with the morning and 
evening sacrifices. 

To the Romans who were engaged in the 
transaction, the Cross must have been a most 
fearful puzzle. 

Pilate sat moody in his palace, having been 
borne down by priestly persistency. He was 
angry and humiliated. There was nothing in 
Jesus to make the representative of Caesar fear- 
ful for the crown of his master. He was appar- 
ently a penniless peasant and a harmless enthu- 
siast, so far as Pilate could see. But the deep, 
the frightful interest which the leading religion- 
ists and the priests of the nation manifested in 
having Him slain, and the prodigies that fol- 
lowed the sentence which Pilate felt himself 
compelled by the circumstances to pronounce, 
combined with the singular dignity and silence 
of the accused, must have made the Cross to 
Pilate the fearfullest thing he had ever known. 

And there were the rude Roman soldiers, 
men of the camp and the barracks, who had 



carried their dice out that they might amuse 
themselves with play while three wretches were 
slowly expiring on the cross — men who had wit- 
nessed many an execution and been in bloody tu- 
mults and in battles, who had driven the nails 
into Jesus and into the other two persons with 
as little feeling as they would have slaughtered a 
lamb, — what a marvel He was to them ! They 
had never before seen gentleness that was not 
weakness. The two malefactors were not gentle. 
They were strong men, and resisted, and cursed 
and swore, and died hard. But Jesus was as 
dignified on His cross as the Imperator on his 
throne, and yet was as gentle as a babe. When 
the commander of the platoon saw all, be was 
forced to believe that it was a god he beheld 
dying. He exclaimed, "Surely this was a son 
of the gods !" It was a dread mystery. 

How must it have seemed to the disciples 
who hovered about the outskirts of the crowd, 
or cowered, broken-hearted, in lonely chambers 
in the city? O what a dire disappointment it 
was to their hearts ! O what a tight puzzle it 
was to their brains ! O what a sore trial it was 
to their faith ! Was not this the Prophet of 
God? Has He not made displays of power that 
were credentials of His divine mission ? And 
would God send out so spotless a man to die 
ignominiously ? 

For, we must strive to recollect what the cross 
was, my brethren. We have wrought it in gold 
and wreathed it with flowers, and worn it as an 
ornament, and placed it at the head of all hu- 
man symbolisms, until we have transfigured it. 
It had none of these associations originally. It 
was the meanest of all the engines of torture. 
The guillotine has something respectable in 
it, as it was for the decapitation of princes as 
well as robbers. The gallows is not so mean as 
the cross, for when there was slavery among us, 
and a master and his slave were convicted of a 
capital crime, they perished on the same scaffold. 
But the cross was reserved for slaves. It added 
deepest ignominy to death. Tacitus called cru- 
cifixion the torture of slaves. 

Now, when they saw their Master hanging 
there, it was indescribably puzzling as well as 
painful. He had been so good, so sweet, so 
pure, so what all men's ideal of the perfect man 
has ever been ! He had shown such power, 
stilling the winds, multiplying bread, opening 
deaf ears and blind eyes, cleansing lepers and 
raising the dead, doing all those things that they 
had been taught to believe belonged only unto 
God to do. How could He let Himself be cru- 
cified ! How could the great eternal God allow 



124 



What Jesus saw from the Cross. 



this model of goodness and beauty to be crushed 
out of the world? The Cross gave them a dis- 
appointment sadder than ever had fallen on men 
before, sadder than any since. It was the bitter- 
est blighting of hopes recorded in the history of 
humanity. 

But Jesus — how did it all seem to Him ? He 
knew what was in Pilate's mind, and what in the 
minds of the chief-priests and the Jewish rabble 
and the Roman centurion and the brutal soldiery 
and His fainting Mother and His disheartened, 
disappointed friends. He knew that they felt 
that they were parting from Him forever. He 
heard the gibes and jeers of the mocking crowd, 
the roar of the unfeeling mob, the groans and 
cries of the Blessed Virgin, and the frightful 
noise wherewith the earthquake burst open the 
tombs and ripped the Temple's veil from top to 
bottom. He saw the darkness coming on 
Temple and Tower and Calvary, and on His 
own soul, like the shadow of hell. But through 
it all He beheld a vision ! But above it all He 
heard a shout ! And he died satisfied ! 

Now, what was it in Christ's sufferings which 
gave them the interest with which the Bible 
always speaks of them? It was not that His 
physical sufferings were so very extraordinary. 
Hundreds of thousands of men have endured as 
much. The two rogues who were on crosses 
on either side of Him suffered quite as much 
bodily as He. It was not the meekness with 
which He bore it all, for no man can suffer as 
much as a woman can, and many a woman has 
endured the most exquisite torture and died in 
meeker silence. 

It was not a display of heroism. There was 
nothing of that in Jesus. He did not meet His 
fate heroically. His behavior in dying would 
bring contempt upon Him from many a pirate 
and highwayman and prize-fighter, who have 
borne the blows of death unflinching, while He 
shrank and sank under them. The thieves that 
died with Him were more heroic. They defied 
their tormentors and flung grim jokes from their 
crosses among the populace and at one another, 
and one of them at Jesus, whom the fierce villain 
manifestly despised for His displays of what he 
considered unmanly weakness. 

Was it His martyrdom merely, as some 
teach? It could not have been, for Stephen 
and Paul and Peter were equally martyrs, stoned, 
beheaded, crucified, because they would not 
cease to bear witness to the truth. How is it that 
His death continues this day to affect the world 
as no death of other martyr or hero or deliverer 
does? Read the prophecy. Read the history. 



Read the comments of the Apostles. Here is 
what makes this death surpass all deaths: it was 
vicarious, it was expiatory. " He was wounded 
for our transgressions." " With His stripes we 
are healed." "He was bruised for our iniqui- 
ties ; the chastisement of our peace was upon 
Him?'' Take that element away ; say He died 
as other good men die, or other great men die ; 
and then we are a world of fools, for we have ex- 
pended our poetry and art and tenderest senti- 
ments on a death which has often been equalled 
in all the elements of martyrdom, and sometimes 
surpassed. 

There was holy Stephen, dying under the 
blows of stones and in the sight of heaven. 
Was he not a martyr? Yes; but he was not 
"bruised for our iniquities." There was Paul, 
grandly self-sacrificing, and in death dropping 
his head from the block of the imperial execu- 
tioner. Was he not a martyr ? Yes ; but he 
was not "wounded for our transgressions." 
There was Peter, who endured a bitter cruci- 
fixion, maintaining the truth he had once de- 
nied. Was he not a martyr? Yes; but "the 
chastisement of our peace was not laid on him." 
And none of the martyr-souls ever said of him- 
self, ''And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men 
unto me." But Jesus did say that, and Jesus is 
doing that. 

The attraction of the Cross lies in the fact, 
and solely in the fact, that Jesus was "suffering 
for sin, the just for the unjust, that He might 
bring us to God." Take away that element 
and His decease sinks to the level of an ordinary 
death. With that element, it was the most 
painful and the most productive death among 
men. 

It was amid all the sufferings, it was in the 
crisis of His mental and spiritual horror and 
agony and darkness, that a vision broke on the 
eyes of Jesus which made even His death on 
the cross — which was much more dreadful than 
any other death on the cross, not in its physical 
pain, but in its excruciation of spirit — to be even 
a satisfaction to Him. 

First of all, He saw the completion of, the 
most stupendous undertaking of God. 

Now, among men success is always pleasing. 
In proportion to the largeness of the outlay, the 
risk of the venture, and the time or strength 
required for the accomplishment of the work, 
the success is exciting to every one who witnesses 
it, but still more to the person most concerned. 

When it was considered sufficiently practic- 
able to enlist large capital in the laying of a 
cable on the bed of the ocean, that two great 



What Jesus saw from the Cross. 



125 



nations might speak and be instantly heard by 
each other across three thousand miles of stormy 
seas ; when millions of money and several years 
and many reputations had been staked on the 
experiment ; and when heads and hearts had 
ached through many many months ; and the 
keptics and adverse critics had predicted fail- 
ure : and several times failure had seemed in- 
evitable ; but when at last the prodigious under- 
taking was a success, how the shouts of the 
people filled the air and ran thrilling through 
the waves, New York went wild with joy be- 
cause one of our fellow-citizens had encountered 
and overcome such vast difficulties. We have 
had greater faith in the capabilities of human 
nature ever since. 

Even those who know nothing of the formid- 
able oppositions Mr. Cyrus W. Field and his 
coadjutors had to overcome, are amazed at the 
grandeur of the undertaking when they contem- 
plate what is open to every man's view. But to 
him the success must have given a secret joy 
that could be shared by no partner. 

O how above all mere human accomplish- 
ments is the achievement of the cross ! It was 
the attempt to present to man the love of God 
for him in such a light that his blinded eyes 
might see it, and in such a way that his hard- 
ened heart might feel it. None knew that blind- 
ness and that hardness as Jesus did. There is 
no mere man who can measure the intensity of 
the repugnance between good and evil. There 
no man can know how precious to the heart of 
God is a single soul. God the Father knows 
how he loves man the son. He only knows 
what a loss it is to Him to have any soul perish. 
He knows that the only way to save a soul is to 
arouse its love for the good, and make it feel an 
interest in eternal things, because it feels sure 
that the Heavenly Father loves it. Hence the 
divine necessity of the incarnation and the suf- 
ferings on the cross. 

Jesus saw the whole of this, swept this vast 
circuit of thought with a glance, and saw 
that in the cross that to which God could 
forever appeal is the demonstration of His 
changeless love for man. The chasm that lay 
broad and deep between earth and heaven, 
between man and God, was to be bridged by 
the cross ; and when it touched both sides, and 
lay securely firm on the pillars of eternal justice 
and eternal love, and put the denizens of time 
into full communication with the inhabitants of 
eternity, Jesus died with a shout of satisfaction, 
the memory of which shakes heaven and earth 
with gladness to this day. 



The vision gave Him the satisfaction of a 
conqueror. 

The opposition between Good and Evil is not 
passive. It is a dire, relentless conflict, a war 
of extermination. Evil cannot exist where Good 
is, nor Good where Evil is. It is what Plato 
calls "the undying war." It involves every 
being that has consciousness and will. All men, 
all spirits are in it, ranked and ranged on one 
side or the other. Evil is in opposition to God. 
It is an evil thing to think that our interests are 
not identical with God's, that He has some plan 
which He is going to carry forward without 
regard to the happiness of His human children, 
and that it is possible for us to find our happi- 
ness and success regardless of what He thinks 
and what He commands. No one would be 
found fighting on the side of the Evil if he truly 
believed that God deeply loved him and was 
exerting His infinite powers and was employing 
His infinite resources to make him happy. The 
war-cry of Evil is, "Down with God." Why? 
What has God done ? " He has bound man in 
iron bands, and is a tyrant," says Evil. " Am 
I?" says the Heavenly Father. " Look on the 
cross and see. I have become one in flesh with 
my children, as they were one in spirit with 
me. I have lifted their burdens, have drunk 
of their bitter cups, have identified Myself with 
them, so that hereafter, whoever slights a man, 
slights God; whoever injures a man, injures 
God; whoever ministers to man, ministers to 
God. O, my children, how could I, how could 
I show My love more plainly ?" 

It was this that was to prove the defeat of 
Evil. This was to be the greatest reinforcement 
of Good. Jesus saw it all. He saw that "the 
banner of the Cross" was not to be a mere flourish 
of rhetoric but the symbol of a mighty truth. 
Whenever a blow was given to Evil it was to be 
given in the name the highest love, and that 
highest love was on the Cross. Whenever men 
believed that the Lord of Eternity had incarnated 
Himself to come lovingly near to man, men 
would come lovingly near to God, and the 
nearer men come to God, the further they go 
from evil, and so His death would bring victory 
to the side of the good. It was the anticipation 
of this victory which so cheered the soul of the 
dying but conquering Jesus. He died knowing 
that now was to be fulfilled what the prophet 
had spoken in this chapter, " Therefore will I 
divide Him a portion with the great, and He 
shall divide the spoil with the strong, because 
He has poured out his soul unto death." He 
I sprung from the depths of death to the throne 



126 



What Jesus saw from the Cross. 



of the hearts of men, and died the greatest of 
the conquerors. 

And, lastly, in that vision was a sight of the 
success of the Gospel in winning the hearts of 
men to God. 

He knew what one soul is, in all its worth and 
in all its capabilities of development. If there had 
been but one soul in the universe in alienation 
from its Heavenly Father, it had been worth all 
that Jesus endured to lay that soul under saving 
bonds of love. He saw such a soul, and so saved, 
and gazed on its ascending and widening and 
brightening path of immortality, until its increas- 
ing glory oversplendored the Cross and filled 
the soul of the dying Jesus with shouts of satis- 
faction. 

One such triumph would have repaid the 
august sufferer for all that He endured. But 
He "saw His seed, He prolonged His days." 
He beheld Pentecost, the effusion of the Holy 
Ghost, and the conversion of the three thousand 
souls in one day. He beheld the travels and labors 
and successes of His Apostles, and hundreds and 
thousands of men, women, and children in 
Antioch, where they were first called Christians 
after Him, and in Philippi and Colosse and 
Smyria and Ephesus, and in the seat of imperial 
power, Rome, that was soon to be pagan Rome 
no more but Christian Rome forever. He saw 
men worshipping Him in catacombs and clois- 
ters and cathedrals. He beheld tall and great 
and reverend heads bow with the golden heads 
of children when His name was called. Kings 
were becoming fathers and queens nursing 
mothers to His people. Westward the star of 
Jesus took its way. The cold isle of Britain 
became great through Him. The vast continent of 
America received and reared millions that loved 
Him. The whole earth was girdled with churches 
erected to His name. There is not a moment of 
day or night that some one was not lovingly and 
trustingly speaking His dear name. Hush ! He 
hears them, breathing, speaking, singing, shout- 
ing the name of " Jesus." Fainting people 
whisper 

,€c Jesus can make a dying bed 

Feel soft as downy pillows are, 
While on his breast I lay my head 

And breathe my life out sweetly there ." 

He saw and felt the terrible darkness around 
Him, perhaps filled with preternatural sounds 
and sights of horror. But through it all He 
beheld the final triumph of the cause of Love. 
He saw the ranks of the redeemed spirits, gone 
up from earth, walking in the heavenly land, 



thronging the blissful groves, crowding the eter- 
nal temple, circling the everlasting throne. No 
more sins and penitence and sorrows now ! All 
tears wiped from all eyes ! Who are these in 
white robes? These are they that came up 
through much tribulation and "washed their 
robes and made them white in the blood of the 
Lamb." And He sees Himself again on the 
throne of the universe, and all these won, 
changed, redeemed, loving children worshipping 
Him, and shouting to Him and singing, " Sal- 
vation to our God that sitteth upon the throne, 
even unto the Lamb !" The musical thunder 
of that mighty song rolled down the heavens and 
fell upon the cross, and Jesus heard and saw of 
the travail of His soul, and cried, "It is fin- 
ished," and, with a sense of completion, died, 
"satisfied!" 

Nothing but the saving of souls can satisfy 
Him. 

There had been two other epochs of marked 
significancy in the biography of God. 

One was at the creation of the material uni- 
verse, when the u morning stars," those spiritual 
creatures who were the beginnings of the work 
of God, "sung together," and "all the sons of 
God shouted for joy !" They had known what 
spiritual substance is, but now God makes them 
to see Matter and Force, and these new and 
sublime revelations filled them with a rapture 
that burst forth in songs and shouts. They had 
never seen so much of God before ! He saw 
His worlds, He heard His angels sing, and yet 
the unappeasable heart of Infinite Love had its 
divine longings. It was not said of Him that 
He was satisfied. 

Again. There was a most mysterious event. 
It occurred I know not where in the universe, 
nor when in eternity, nor how ' in the pro- 
cesses of God. The First-begotten was brought 
into the world. God put Himself before His 
mighty angels in some new way that showed 
fatherhood and sonhood. This was a grander 
revelation of Himself than ever before, more 
sublimely mysterious. " All the angels of God" 
saw it. It was an epoch in eternity. Angelic 
histories must date in cycles before and after 
the bringing-in of the First-begotten. All the 
angels worshipped him. He saw every lyre of 
heaven hushed, every head in heaven bared, 
and every crown in heaven laid at His feet 
Never was there such homage. It was a sight 
of awfullest beauty and most solemn delight. 
Angels found in themselves unknown depths of 
spirit filled with tides of almost intolerable 
gladness. Jesus, the Christ, had enjoyed even 



What Jesus saw 



from the Cross. 



127 



that. But He was not satisfied. The unappeas- 
able heart of the Infinite Love still had its 
longings. 

Nothing satisfied Him until sinners were saved. 

Nothing satisfies Him now until the heart of 
man yields to the claims of love. 

But when a poor, broken-hearted, contrite, 
penitent wretch looks up to the cross and per- 
ceives its significance of divine love, acknowl- 
edges the Father of Spirits in the Son of Man, 
and yields himself to this supreme argument of 
God in this supreme self-sacrifice of love, and 
comes and throws himself confidingly into the 
arms, of the divine affection and is saved, 
then, and then only, does Jesus " see His 
seed," " see of the travail of His soul, and is 
satisfied." 

We may pile gold and frankincense and myrrh 
around the cradle of the infant Redeemer; we 
may build cathedrals of marble, and adorn them 
with malachite and gems and precious stones 
so costly that one of them would give bread to 
a whole starving province ; we may preach the 
doctrines of the atonement with tenfold the logic 
of Paul and rhetoric of Peter; we may sing 
the name of Jesus in every metre to the accom- 
paniment of every musical instrument, and yet, 
if we do not let God in Christ reconcile us 
unto Himself, if we do not receive into our souls 
the spiritual gift of the cross, we shall never, 



for our parts, have given satisfaction to the 
crucified. 

My dear brethren, have you given that satis- 
faction to Christ by giving Him your heart ? 
When He looks down into that heart, does He 
see such tender penitence, such true faith, such 
holy hope, and such divine love, that He says of 
you, " I am satisfied !" 

O brethren of my church, of all the churches, 
are you and I day and night striving to deepen 
the satisfaction of our Lord by bringing our chil- 
dren and friends and all our human brothers 
under the power of the cross ? Can He look 
down into our homes and shops and stores, into 
our pews, into this pulpit, and see on our parts 
such intentness to have souls saved, that noth- 
ing contents us that is not promoting the salva- 
tion of souls, — does He see all this until His 
mighty soul beholds our work, and says to the 
angels about Him, " I am satisfied?" 

O Jesus Christ, Almighty lover of our souls, 
send from Thy cross and from Thy throne Thy 
spirit of love into our hearts until every one of 
us shall be able to say, in all truth and with 
deepest earnestness, " God forbid that I should 
glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.'' 
O blessed cross, O wondrous cross, that of ail 
there is in earth and heaven, alone canst give 
peace to the heart of men and satisfaction to 
the soul of God. 



XXI. 

41 FOR THIS PURPOSE WAS THE SON OF GOD MANIFESTED, THAT HE MIGHT DESTROY THE 

WORKS OF THE DEVIL." — I JOHN, III. 8. 



Righteousness is obedience to law. 
Sin is lawlessness. 

Every man is at his birth a child of God. 
Unwillingness to keep the commands breaks 
him away from his natural Father. The Devil 
adopts him. He then does the will of his new, 
bad father, which is, that he should lead a law- 
less life. 

The Devil is a person, not a myth, nor a mere 
idea, nor a phantasy. He is as much a person 
as you are, as God is. In advance, there is 
nothing preposterous, nothing ridiculous, noth- 
ing unreasonable, we may say nothing im- 
possible in the supposition that there is an 
entity, a personal being, endowed with intelli- 
gence and moral qualities specially and actively 
evil, thoroughly and ceaselessly evil. Nay, the 
probabilities, apart from any revelation, are in 
favor of the existence of such a person, although 
it is manifestly out of the power of the human 
reason to determine the conditions of his exist- 
ence and the modes of his activity. 

Every intelligent man who devotes any time 
to self-inspection finds that his violations of any 
code which he believes to be the moral law, 
come either from certain emotions of his own 
inner nature — excited he cannot tell how, spon- 
taneous so far as he knows — acting upon his 
will, making such a pressure on that will as 
amounts to a temptation; or, that such excita- 
tion of the emotions and such pressure upon the 
will is from something without. In the latter 
case it may be some perception of some object 
which he sees, or of some sound which he hears, 
or some report of the senses undesigned, com- 
ing incidentally upon him; or, it may be de- 
signed, brought to bear upon him by some in- 
telligent being. 

Among the undesigned seductions to evil, or 
what may at least be called evil influences, are 
those attractions and repulsions created in the 
individual man by "the spirit of the age" — a 
general air and temperature generated by all the 
intellectual and spiritual motions about him. 



and coming upon his soul not from any indi- 
vidual's design to be specially hurtful to him, 
but just as deleterious air destroys the health 
and the life even when no man is attempting to 
poison another. 

But we are conscious of sinister and wicked 
designs upon us, concocted and operated by 
wicked men. Some men are adroit, some skill- 
ful, some surpassingly influential for evil. Some 
of these are so really acute in their perceptions, 
so rapid in their motions and so persistent in 
their efforts, that to speak of them as compass- 
• ing sea and land seems hardly an exaggera- 
tion. Artists of the pen sometimes paint these 
far-sighted, near-sighted, telescopic, microscopic, 
almost ubiquitous weavers of deceit and treach- 
ery, and paint them with a power that appals 
us, as Eugene Sue does in his marvellous story 
of "The Wandering Jew." 

The spirits described in that story wore flesh 
about them. They were men. Their material 
bodies were at once a help and a hinderance. 
We can easily imagine those men outside of 
fleshly bodies, yet active and influential, as it 
was not by their bodily presence but by their 
intellectual and spiritual influence that they 
wrought their mischief. We easily reach the 
probability that there are spirits without the clog 
of flesh, who operate upon one another artfully, 
and operate on the spirits of , men, having 
learned the approaches to the soul through the 
flesh. 

As among men there are those who get the 
start and take the lead in the march "of this 
majestic world," and gain and hold the mastery, 
so among them it is not difficult to believe that 
there maybe spirits ambitious of chieftainship 
and capable of lifting themselves over the masses 
to a throne of power and of establishing princi- 
palities in spiritual places. Whoso could reach 
the Czarship in this rule, or obtain and keep 
the skill to hold the General's post in this 
Propaganda, would be The Devil, Satanas, 
1 Satan. 



The Destroyer of the Devil's Works. 



129 



These are merely the probabilities reached by- 
reasoning on the known facts of human nature 
and human society, but are not proofs of the 
existence of a personal Spirit of Evil. That is 
one of the subjects of which men can have no 
positive knowledge beyond what the Father of 
all spirits shall choose to reveal. But if there be 
such a spirit, the probability is that some reve- 
lation of his existence would be made, if God 
ever reveals anything to man. 

Jesus does make such a revelation. He knew 
what was behind the curtain of our humanity, 
what spirits are, and what spirits do, and His 
revelation of Satan was quite new to His own 
people. The Jews had some notion of Satan, 
as a worthless kind of vagabond in the universe, 
such as he is described in the tragedy " Job;" 
but that is not the Devil of the New Testament, 
the organizing and imperial will among evil 
spirits, most acute, a profound student of human 
nature, acting not by physical but by moral 
forces, and specially vindictive against law and 
promotive of lawlessness. This is the Devil 
whom Jesus reveals, an extraordinary intellect- 
ual spirit of malignity and activity, a working 
Devil, working not heedlessly but skillfully, 
cool, calculating, hard, laying plans for the 
introduction of lawlessness, stretching his work 
with diplomatic foresight over centuries, often 
overreaching himself as human diplomats do, 
furious at defeat, and having no sympathy with 
humanity nor sorrow when a human being suf- 
fers, but simply intent on breaking men's faith 
in God, and on having God's law violated. 

You and I are acquainted with men just like 
this, so like the Devil that, if he ever have 
children, we should say, " This is one of his 
children," the likeness to the father is so striking. 
And John says that they are his children. 

!, It is natural to say that sin is one of the 
works of the Devil. 

But here it is proper to discriminate. Sin 
can be in the world without the Devil, but not 
the Devil without sin. It is not fair to lay all 
the sin of the world on the Devil. Men can sin 
without his suggestion or help, on the prompt- 
ings of their own depravity. But the life-work 
of the Devil being to promote sin, all his activi- 
ties being thus engaged, his whole soul being 
thrown into it, a soul of vast capacity, constantly 
saying " Evil, be thou my good," he has made 
sin his office and function. He does nothing 
but sin. He has been a sinner from the begin- 
ning of his being a devil. All his nature, in all 
its roots, is given to sinning. 

The Apostle John describes sin as lawlessness. 



The fundamental intellectual mistake of the 
Devil is that law is a bad thing, that anarchy is 
better for the universe than order. This he 
propagates by all the intellectual agencies at his 
command. And practically he spends his life 
in violating every law the observance of which is 
left to a free will. By example in the spiritual 
world, and by influences brought to bear among 
men, he is propagating the same opinions and 
the same practices. Just as the spirit of one 
man influences the spirit of another, so may he 
produce intellectual impressions. He is not the 
originator of all sin. He is not omnipresent. 
He cannot write a book or utter articulate human 
sounds ; but he can influence the writer, who, 
in a newspaper or novel, may teach licentiousness, 
which is lawlessness; teach, for instance, that 
the law of reverence, the law of the Sabbath, the 
law of marriage, the law of truth, are oppressive 
regulations, instituted by the powerful Ruler 
of the world, and based on his own autocratic will, 
and not on the good of the governed. 

The wrong of sin, whether regarded in its in- 
tellectual or moral or practical aspects, is in its 
lawlessness. The Devil could not have been 
originally created such ; he became Devil when 
he became lawless. Of course he does all he 
can to win adherents. But as the idea of the 
badness of law originated in the mind of the 
first devil, without suggestion or hint, so may it 
come to yours or mine, without the help of any 
devil. But, as all tendency to disease is devel- 
oped by unhealthful surroundings, so he that is 
the chief of evil spirits generates a bad spiritual 
air as widely as possible, while he knows that sin 
is contagious and self-propagative. The im- 
mense effects in this department of the labors of 
the one mightiest of all the bad spirits it is abso- 
lutely appalling to contemplate. 

2. Another department of his vile works is 
the discord he produces. 

His intent being to break up the harmony of 
the whole universe, he promotes that end, as far 
as practicable, in the separation of each soul 
from God and in the separation of any two souls 
that feel that they have a common interest. 
The devotion of any human heart and life to 
God or to another human heart is so much in 
accordance with the original intent of the Fa- 
ther. " A whisperer separateth chief friends." 
It is so easy for a spirit of evil to throw over one 
of those hearts a shadow that shall darken both. 
A suspicion, a jealousy, a misinterpreted look or 
tone, may make alienation and hatred. And 
then how it spreads through a family, through a 
Church, through a neighborhood, through a 



ISO 



The Destroyer of 



the Devil's Works. 



nation. How wide-spread the hostility may be 
made by a man who has thousands of human 
emissaries at his command ! How much greater 
when the evil ones are invisible but potential. 
An army with swords may kill many, but they 
can be fought back, for they are visible ; but 
what can men do to defend themselves from the 
pestilence that walketh in darkness ? It is thus 
that wars come. War breeds lawlessness, as 
lawlessness breeds war. The Devil and devilish 
men love the tattoo of the drum, the bray of the 
brazen trumpet, and the roar of artillery. Music 
must be hateful to the Devil, for music is the 
product of law, and a beautiful proof of the good 
of law ; but if there be any music among the evil 
spirits it is military music. It incites to a viola- 
tion of the law of love. 

3. A third work of the Devil is deception, a 
violation of the law of truth. 

Everything should seem as k is. Every~rnan's 
look and tone should be representative of his 
real thought and feeling. But how seldom is 
this the case ! How difficult it is now, since 
Satan, and spirits like him, and men like him, 
have produced such wide-spread impression upon 
human society, to bring ourselves to believe that 
the law of truth is good for us and promotive of 
our happiness. How deceitful men and women 
have become ! We are afraid to show our opin- 
ions and intentions and plans, because people are 
so bad that they will use their knowledge to de- 
feat us. And then we so often conceal our plans 
and intentions and opinions, because we are con- 
scious that they are bad. So the evil of our own 
hearts and the evil of other people's hearts nurse 
our spiritual deception, until we come to regard 
an unsophisticated person not as a precious and 
beautiful rarity, but as a fellow-creature who 
has claims on our sympathy because of his igno- 
rance. 

One of the bitterest forms of this work of the 
Devil is seen in the spiritual delusions which pre- 
vail among men. We are assured that the Devil 
can take on himself the appearance of an angel 
of light. In his modes of thinking, no success 
can be greater than to deceive a man in what 
concerns his spiritual welfare. This is shown in 
his first interview with humanity, in which he 
put his fundamental proposition, " law is bad," 
so adroitly before the mother of the race that 
she fell into lawlessness. Ever since he has 
been at that work. " The Devil sinneth from 
the beginning." 

The work he seems to have proposed to him- 
self in this generation is to convince us that there 
is "a higher law" than God's law. The most 



infernal of all expressions is that phrase of <f the 
higher law." It seems to be the Devil's latest 
achievement in deceit, and must seem to him an 
extraordinary success when he hears it spoken 
in human language. It seems impossible to 
eradicate from men's minds the idea of law. 
When a bad man begins his work of seduction 
he finds this barrier. It has always stood in the 
way of the Devil. And so he sets himself to a 
study of the problem how to make men lawless, 
while they preserve their regard for law ; and he 
seems to have fallen upon the expedient of teach- 
ing that there is " a higher law." No one will 
ever find that, but the search will lead him 
away from law ; and that is what the wicked in- 
tellect of the Devil proposes. He thus misleads 
men into lawlessness by false uses of the ideas 
of " philanthropy" and "morality" and "re- 
ligion," until millions of men have come to be 
deceived and to be deceiving one another. And 
this is the basis of all the false religions in the 
world. 

4. One of the saddest works of the Devil is a 
creation in human society of the dread of death. 
The death of a human body is as natural and 
regular an event as its birth. When the Heav- 
enly Father warned man against disobedience 
He kindly informed him that the result would be 
the death of his soul. The spirit of evil trans- 
ferred the idea to the body, and appealed to 
man's animal instincts, and when the open com- 
munion between man and the celestial world 
was closed, his animal instincts necessarily be- 
came more powerful, because he had nothing to 
hope for beyond this present life. And so there 
came to be a horror of dying, a horror of having 
one's friends dead. This present life is robbed 
of much of its bloom and beauty by making 
death and eternity terrible. Life has been dark- 
ened. Immortality has been darkened. It has 
become hard to live. It has become dreadful to 
die. But for sin, which is lawlessness, a woman 
would be glad when a man-child is born into this 
world, and glad when, by death, that man-child 
was born into the other world ; because it is in 
the regular order of a law which secures the 
greatest happiness of all by securing the great- 
est happiness of each. 

We have time this morning to go no further. 
Here are four representative works of the Devil, 
works which may be wrought by men without 
the Devil, but works to which he constantly 
gives his mighty powers : first, a spirit of gen- 
eral lawlessness ; second, a hatred of the law of 
love, shown in the discords of men ; thirdly, a 
hatred of the law of truth, shown in their decep* 



The Destroyer of the Devil's Works. 



131 



tions ; and, lastly, a hatred of the law of prog- 
ress, shown in the dread of death. 

The intent of the manifestation of 
Jesus is to destroy the works of the 
Devil. 

In this passage from John we find the same 
idea, conveyed in the same word, as that which 
Paul sets forth in his first letter to Timothy, in 
the third chapter and fifteenth verse, where Paul 
says, " God was manifested in the flesh." 

Paul and John and the author of the Epistle to 
the Hebrews believed in the pre-existence of 
Jesus. John calls Him " The Word," and says, 
"The Word was God." Jesus called Himself 
"the Son of God," and John says that "the 
Son of God was manifested that He might de- 
stroy the works of the Devil." The writer of the 
Letter to the Hebrews says of some sublimely 
mysterious occurrence in Eternity, in which 
Jesus was the central figure, that when He was 
brought into the world as the First-begotten, all 
the angels of God were commanded to worship 
Him. Paul plainly calls Him God, and says of 
His incarnation, that " God was manifested in 
the flesh." 

The very word here translated "manifested" 
is the same as that used in I Timothy, iii. 15, 
and in every case implies an existence previous 
to the act of manifestation ; indeed, nothing can 
be "exhibited," "brought to light," "made 
manifest," which has not previously been in ex- 
istence. 

Jesus was in eternity, according to the Holy 
Scriptures, before He was born of Mary. Jesus 
was the Creator of the material universe, accord- 
ing to the Holy Scriptures. Jesus is the Judge 
of men, according to the Holy Scriptures. 

Now, the terrible importance of the power and 
work of the Devil, the terrible malignity of sin, 
appears if we contrast the descriptions which are 
given of the works of creation and redemption 
severally. See with what ease the worlds of 
massive splendor, matter with all its qualities, 
force with its modifications, force and matter in 
action and reaction, producing all the beautiful 
and sublime phenomena of the physical uni- 
verse — see with what ease they are produced. 
" He spake, — and it was ! He commanded, — 
and it stood fast !" At a word they existed, by a 
word they were fast bound in a chain they could 
never break. But when He had children, with 
wills as free as His own, with wills that must be 
as free as His own, if they are His children and 
not simply His creatures ; and when they went 
into lawlessness, when they broke themselves 
from the rule of right, there was no way to bring 



them back by authority. He could not coerce 
their human wills. That were an end of virtue. 
All forced love is no love. 

But they must be brought back. It is as im- 
portant for God as for man that His human chil- 
dren be brought back. There must be some 
method devised and executed which should de- 
stroy the devilish work of lawlessness. If the 
Devil had wrenched a material world from the 
brilliant circle of the skies and flung it wildly 
into space, a word of God could set it back 
again. But sin is something more perplexing. 
It cannot be reached by authority. It denies 
authority. It cannot be reached by arbitrary 
law. It defies law. That is what makes it sin. 
There must be some other way for the salvation 
of the sinner. 

Any plan would necessitate the exhibition 
to man of God's personality, the familiarizing of 
man with the idea of God's lovingness, and the 
bringing to bear on the free-will of man such 
influences as shall move him in the exercise of 
his own free-will to keep himself under the law 
habitually, in contrast with his previous lawless- 
ness. 

Now, how is such a thing to be achieved ? 

Quite obviously it is out of the sphere of 
omnipotence. Men sometimes talk wildly about 
the omnipotence of God. Omnipotence does 
not mean the capability of doing everything. It 
is inconceivable that any one being should have 
that capability, because things are sometimes 
contrary and sometimes contradictory. Omnip- 
otence is simply the capability of doing with 
power what can be done with power. There 
are obviously things that are totally out of that 
sphere. The salvation of the sinner is just one 
such case. The works of the Devil are just such 
as cannot be blasted by a stroke of Omnipotence. 
There must be moral force exerted among 
things which are not physical, and an element 
of attractiveness must be put into law in order 
to draw man from his lawlessness. 

The process of salvation does that very 
thing. 

In his Epistle to the Hebrews, Paul has this : 
" Forasmuch then as the children are partakers 
of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took 
part of the same, that through death He might 
destroy him that had the power of death, that 
is, the Devil." 

It must be perceived that if the death of Jesus 
was merely what takes place when any man 
dies, that it was simply a hard fate befalling an 
innocent but mistaken man, or even that it was 
a death of purest martyrdom for the loftiest 



132 



The Destroyer of the Devil's Works. 



truth, these words of Paul must be the language 
of senseless exaggeration. But, believe all that 
Moses and the prophets and the apostles 
have elsewhere said of this death, and what 
Jesus Himself announced, and then these 
words of Paul become the statement of a great 
philosophical system of salvation. They teach 
that God, the Almighty Father of men, out of 
original impulses of love for His human children, 
did take their human nature on to His divine 
nature and drink their cups of bitterness and 
carry their burdens of sorrows and identify 
Himself with humanity down into death and 
through death, in supreme and complete demon- 
stration of His love, that there might never 
more be a doubt on the question whether God 
loved man. 

Apply this system to the several representa- 
tive works of the Devil which we have re- 
viewed : f) 

i. Sin is lawlessness, says the Apostle. How 
is a man to be broken from his lawlessness ? 
Certainly not by the law, for he denies and defies 
the law. Its penalties are empty threats to him. 
He can strip himself naked and dance round a 
golden calf, in lowest idolatry, in front of that 
awful mount of Sinai, on the dread top of which 
the Almighty Jehovah is pavilioning Himself 
in clouds and talking in thunder and gazing 
in lightning flashes on man's horrible degrada- 
tion. Little good comes of telling a man that 
his sins will bring him torment. He only hates 
the law the more. That does not make his 
darling sin more hateful to him. It does inten- 
sify his opposition to the law, which he now 
regards as a tyrranical arrangement to interfere 
with his pleasures. 

You must make sin seem horrible if you 
break away a reasonable man from sinning. 
" Through death" Jesus does this. His death 
proves that the Heavenly Father is not angry 
because some one is doing what He does not 
want done, but that He is "hurt" in His heart 
by the behavior of His child. The pale face of 
a mother sitting in her grief at the wrong-doing 
of her son, and the tears that fall in silence 
down her cheek, tears wrung from her broken 
heart, do more to stop the wild career of her 
boy than all the penal enactments of the State, 
or all the threats of parental authority. 

The pathetic appeal from the Cross expresses 
the grieved love of God. It creates a new tie of 
love. Men see that it is not vengeance, but 
grief. Never did such love and such sorrow 
meet before. If that be God's disposition to- 
ward us after all our sinfulness, He is the best 



of fathers and of friends, and sin is absolutely 
disgraceful. It is only thus that sin can become 
odious. The law convicts. Love converts. All 
wise winners of souls, knowing the terror of the 
law " persuade men," as Paul says he did. 
The death of Jesus is God's persuasion from sin. 

2. The work of the Devil which results in the 
discords of the world is destroyed by the death 
of Jesus. 

The great argument of Christianity is, If God 
so loved us, we ought also to love one another. 
We ought to do it because He has given us an 
example of the highest excellence in His love 
for those who had thoroughly outraged Him, 
and in that all men are objects of this love as 
well as each man. If my brother deceives, 
maligns, betrays, and persecutes me, and a 
spirit of vengeance springs up in my heart, im- 
mediately the Cross comes in between him and 
me, and that pale face of tenderness and forgive- 
ness says, "He has treated Me worse than he 
has treated you, and I am dying for him be- 
cause I love and forgive him." All philanthropy 
which is not braced by this doctrine is an empty 
show. When I believe that God was manifested 
in the flesh, that God is in Christ, and that in 
Christ He is reconciling the world unto Himself, 
and that each brother-man is deeply, dearly, 
everlastingly loved by the good Father, then he 
becomes dear to me. 

when we recollect, brethren, that every 
man who has worked us harm was as much in 
the heart of Jesus when He was dying as you 
and I were, how our discords end ! Who can 
slay a man while he looks into that man's eyes 
and feels that Jesus died for him ? 

1 can fancy two poor penitent wretches that 
have been enemies, now touched with a sense of 
tenderness of God and turning to the Cross as 
the great exemplification of that love. As one 
of these broken-hearted penitents, blinded with 
tears, and crushed with a sense of his unworthi- 
ness, stretches out his hands to clasp the feet of 
the Crucified, he feels other hands clasping his. 
They are the hands of his enemy, who has come 
up from the other side, forgetting all the wrongs 
done him in remembrance of the wrongs he has 
done his Heavenly Father. The enmity of each 
toward the other is overcome by the transcend- 
ent love of the Lord for them both. 

3. Thus also " by death" Jesus destroys that 
other work of the Devil — falsehood, which vio- 
lates the law of truth. 

When a man is assured that he has the un- 
faltering love of one who is omnipotent, and 
who knows all the things of God and all the 



The Destroyer of the Devil's Works. 



ISS 



things of man, and who will never leave him, 
why should he deceive others, why should he 
deceive himself ? If He who died on the cross 
be verily God, and knows everything there is in 
me, good and bad, and yet loved me so that He 
pledges the protection of His power to support 
me, how can any man use any opinion or fact 
of mine so as to injure me personally? If he 
hates me, he will use the falsehood as readily 
as he will the truth. If I have no assur- 
ance of such interest on the part of God, 
if I am a mere materialist, if I am an atheist, 
then there can be nothing in truth or false- 
hood, except as I see that each is apparently 
and immediately helpful to me. If I have 
wrong views of God, or have narrow views, I 
may fall into spiritual delusions; but the death 
of Jesus, who is God manifest in the flesh, makes 
this the largest, loveliest, most encouraging and 
supporting doctrine conceivable ; and I have no 
need to rush off to false systems to give me com- 
fort when there is so much comfort here. 

4. Lastly, by death Jesus has destroyed that 
other work of the Devil, a dread" of death. 

He has gone through all there is in it of pain 
and degradation, and risen out of it to live in the 
hearts of the race. He has shown that there is 
no more degradation in death than in birth, 
since he has descended from the throne of the 
universe to pass through death as well as through 
birth. He has brought life to light, and immor- 
tality to light. We live no longer as they who 
sit in a great shadow. We need no longer be 
discontent with our condition, as fighting a great 
battle and bearing a great burden in the dark. 



We are doing this under a great light. If Sinai 
seems to us to set life in darkness and immortal- 
ity in horrible darkness, the death of Jesus, the 
just for the unjust, love for sin, the Loving One 
for the sinner, sends down a blaze of light on 
both, and even fills the grave with glory. 
Thanks be unto God, who giveth us the victory 
through our Lord Jesus Christ ! 

We thus perceive how the manifestation of 
Jesus and His death brings not simply a new 
doctrine but a new life into the world. The vast 
and wonderfully cultivated intellect of the Devil, 
powerful, alert, and persistent, setting itself to 
work against law, which is the life of the uni- 
verse, is met by the intellect and heart of Jesus, 
still vaster, vast as God's, as superior to the 
Devil's as the infinite is to the finite. 

It cheers us, it gives us hope, we pluck cour- 
age, we can believe that the good will triumph, 
we can perceive that the universe is not given 
over to the enemy ; that, work as the Devil may, 
a mightier Worker is in the field, who will de- 
stroy lawlessness, not by force of authority, but 
by the power of divinely self-sacrificing love. 

Will you let Him destroy your sinfulness ? 
He does not seek to destroy you, but to save you. 
He must destroy your sin or your sin will destroy 
you. It is a question for you to decide. Which 
shall it be ? 

Open your heart to his love. Now have all 
the benefits of His manifestation ; shame the 
Devil ; let his works be swept from your hearts 
and lives ; and thus, as far as you are concerned, 
let the manifestation of the Son of God be the 
discomfiture of the Devil. 



XXII. 

%\u $xpx of f (mas*. 

' AN EVIL AND ADULTEROUS GENERATION SEEKETH AFTER A SIGN ; AND THERE SHALL NO SIGN 
BE GIVEN IT, BUT THE SIGN OF THE PROPHET JONAS." — MATTHEW, XII. 39. 



THE natural heart is an evil heart of unbelief. 

This is seen as much in the fact that men are 
continually demanding an addition to the over- 
whelming evidences of the truth of Christianity, 
as in any other index of the heart. " The wish 
is father to the thought" that Christianity maybe 
false. Men have no desire, no will to believe. 
The depravity is in the will. The intellect is 
blinded by the will, which keeps the light per- 
sistently shut out. 

If this were not true every person present 
would this hour be soundly converted to God, by 
faith in Jesus, through the influence of the Holy 
Ghost. Instead of which blessed case, we are 
still requiring to have the oft-repeated proofs 
of the truth presented to our intellects ; and 
when we have received evidence of a sufficient 
amount and kind to convince us of any other 
possible proposition, evidence which we have not 
the ability to refute nor the courage wholly to 
reject, we are demanding that supplementary 
proof be supplied and additional evidence be 
produced to the truth which has been so power- 
fully pressed upon our understanding. We 
would add light to the sun at noon-day. 

This was the sin of the Jews. 

Jesus Christ had wrought many miracles 
among them. He was then in their midst min- 
istering music to the deaf and light to the blind ; 
He was giving tone and nerve and strength to the 
palsy-stricken ; He was performing those two 
miracles which the Jews had always regarded as 
peculiar exhibitions of divine power, the renova- 
tion of lepers and the resuscitation of the dead ; 
and yet, with what now appears unto us as the 
coolest imaginable impudence, the scribes and 
Pharisees come unto him and say, " Master, we 
would see a sign of thee !" It is probable the 
Jews meant to indicate a sign from heaven, some 
great national miracle, visible and profitable to 
the whole people. Perhaps a historical reason 
for the spirit which prompted this demand, may 
be found in that succession of wondrous perform- 
ances of the Divine Hand by which they were 
brought out of bondage and made a notable 
people. While this system of national education 



may account for the demand, it by no means 
justifies that skeptical spirit which asks evidence 
to a truth already established by .multiplied and 
striking proofs. The rays of all prophetic lights 
concentrating at the person of the Divine Re- 
deemer would be supposed sufficient to fasten 
the attention and convince the judgment of 
those who had the Scriptures for their study and 
gloried in being the repository of the oracles of 
God. And yet, with an apparent deter?nination 
not to believe on him " of whom Moses, in the 
law, and the prophets did write," they turned 
away from the evidence which God had offered 
them and demanded a species of proof which 
their own presumption dictated. 

That unreasonableness of the Jewish people 
has survived the scribes and Pharisees who 
made the request of our text. There are those 
now living who, although they have never inves- 
tigated the question of the amount and kind of 
evidence which ought to decide the minds of men 
even upon so momentous a subject as the salva- 
tion of their souls, and altogether they have 
never examined the evidences of the divine ori- 
gin and authority of the Sacred Scriptures and of 
Christianity, have nevertheless dismissed the sub- 
ject of their souls' salvation, because God does 
not with an audible voice from the skies say 
unto them, personally and individually, The 
Bible is my word, Christ is my son, and Chris- 
tianity came forth from me ! 

Now, we presume that it might be safely said 
the proof of Christ's divinity and of the conse* 
quent divine origin of Christianity is quite as 
convincing as though Jesus should appear to 
every man, or God out of heaven declare the 
truth to our race individually. That is to say, 
that the same difficulties might be raised and 
the same skepticism be entertained in the one 
case as in the other. 

Let us suppose such a mode of proof adopted 
by Heaven. God would speak in clear day to 
you, to your neighbor, to me, to every man. 
In my case the evil heart of unbelief would sug- 
gest that it was a dream, an illusion, a vivid 
figment of the imagination. This would espe- 



The Sign 



daily be the case if I heard that tremendous 
voice but once. How could I know that it was 
really the voice of God? Will any one solve 
that question for me? It is altogether possible 
that I might have been mistaken, that a finely 
strung or diseased system of nerves had gathered 
up a casual sound and wrought it to a solemn 
sentence on my brain. But suppose that for the 
time I believed it to be the voice of God : now 
that voice would have to be constantly repeated, 
or I would have to build my belief and my sub- 
sequent conduct on my memory. That this 
voice should every moment or every hour repeat 
the words of truth, not only to me but to all my 
neighbors, is to suppose that the world is to be 
constantly filled with confused thunderings. 

And this is to be remarked : If the millions of 
voices, which are to be so loud as to startle and 
so solemn at first as to fix attention, were con- 
tinued, we should all soon come utterly to disre- 
gard what was said. If a thunder gust had 
never passed .over our continent, and one were 
to visit us now, it is granted that every man and 
woman, and perhaps all the children who are 
not mere babes, would be able, to the last hour 
of their existence, to tell precisely how often the 
tremendous voice crashed through the atmos- 
phere. But who can tell how many claps of 
thunder there were in the last storm, or how 
many claps of thunder he has heard in the past 
year ? Now, my dear friends, if we have failed 
to note what if but once heard would be of sur- 
passing grandeur, what would be every man's 
highest notion and a most complete conception 
of the solemn and the awful in sound, so would 
the oft-repeated voice of Jehovah soon come to 
be as the idle breeze which we regard not. 

Thus much may be said of the evidence to 
each man so far as himself is concerned. The 
voice must come only once to be impressive, and 
then in the future he may rest his faith on his 
memory. But, unless I could know that other 
men had heard the same voice that I heard, I 
should be still more likely to treat the sound as 
imaginary. It must be confirmed by my neigh- 
bor. If I can find out that you heard the voice, 
I shall be more disposed to trust my own ears. 
Did you hear it ? You say, yes ! Now, shall I 
believe you or not ? Perhaps you were deceived : 
I will try others. Five hundred intelligent men, 
who have no motive to deceive me, tell me the 
same. I try their statements repeatedly by all 
the laws of evidence, and the decision invariably 
is that their testimony is to be received. Now 
my faith in that voice of God is to be founded 
upon my own memory and upon the me?nory and 



of Jonas. 135 



testimony of others, or, in disbelieving, I must 
act upon the principle that no proposition is 
susceptible of moral proof, that no man can be- 
lieve this moment what he saw the last, or the 
conclusion to which he came the last moment, 
and consequently that the testimony of my fel- 
low-men is not worth a straw. 

What is the conclusion to which I have ar- 
rived ? Simply and plainly this — I believe that 
nothing can be believed. Indeed ! then, with 
this excellent absurdity, I cannot believe that 
Christianity is false. But it is trifling even to 
ridicule so doting a dogma! My dear friends, 
to the complexion of this absurdity you must 
come at last, or else every external method 
of revelation from heaven must be a ground of 
faith just so far as confidence is to be placed in 
the senses, in human memory, and in human 
testimony, tried by the rational laws of evidence ; 
— and this, take notice, is the identical ground upon 
which Christianity asks you to place its claims. 

" Seeing is believing." Yes, and there is be- 
lieving without seeing. Those of you who have 
never been in Rome, would have no stronger 
assurance of the existence of the seven-hilled 
city than you now have, if you were this moment 
pacing the area of the crumbling Coliseum or 
looking down from the Capitol upon the Forum 
where Tully thundered and where Caesar stood. 
You would have no stronger belief in the fact 
that the battle of Waterloo was fought, as repre- 
sented, or in the existence of the great Corsican, 
if you had seen the onset, the cloud, and the car- 
nage, or sat beside the Emperor when the star 
of his glory went down. Now, just as we have 
come to the perfectly confident trust in these 
facts, we may come, and, if we will hear evi- 
dence, must come to a belief in the existence of 
the Lord Jesus Christ, and of the fact of His 
resurrection. 

The Saviour predicted this event, namely, 
His resurrection, and held it as a sufficient 
ground for the belief that He was divine. To 
all men of all ages who believe that there is a 
God, this fact, if it can be established, must con- 
firm the divinity of our Lord. If there be a God, 
He must hold the gift of life, the power over 
existence, in His own hand, or there must be a 
life-giving agent in the universe out of Himself. 
That extra being, if He can give life at pleasure, 
has the power of contravening the wishes of God 
and robbing Him of His glory by peopling His 
universe with those who would not be His sub- 
jects. This is so manifest, that all who believe 
in a God believe that life and death are in His 
hands. Then, if it can be shown that Jesus 



186 The Sign 



arose from the dead, either God favored an im- 
position by giving it its seal of perfection and 
most glorious foundation of hope, — an imposi- 
tion, which was to raise the impostor up to His 
own throne of supreme dominion, — or else, 
Jesus was holy, and consequently, by His own 
words — for He must have been true under the 
circumstances — He was God. He raised Him- 
self, if His words be true, — an unparalleled cir- 
cumstance even in the history of miracles. One 
who held delegated power from God might raise 
another ; but only a divine Being — God Himself 
— could raise His own assumed body from the 
grave. If this occurred, then the prophecies, 
which the Jews believed to refer to the Son of 
God, and His own prophetic speech when He 
spoke to His disciples about rearing the temple 
again in three days, and His express application 
of the type of Jonah to Himself in our text, and 
His other and even more distinct declaration of 
the fact, were wonderfully fulfilled, and Jesus is 
God and Christianity is true / 

Notice this fact : In all the four Gospels, and 
in nearly every book of the New Testament, the 
resurrection of our Lord from the dead is most 
distinctly recognized and stated ; and all the 
Christian authors of the earliest centuries of the 
Christian era speak of this as a notorious circum- 
stance, and a fact of so vast importance that the 
truth of Christianity is based upon it. They 
agree on no point more fully and clearly than on 
this. The question at once diverts to the genu- 
ineness and authenticity of the New Testament 
Scriptures, the proof of which we have not time 
to examine, perhaps scarcely to indicate. We 
have CcBsar's War in Gaul constantly in our 
midst. It is read by us in boyhood and in man- 
hood, and none of us ever had the slightest 
doubt as to the genuineness and authenticity of 
that book. Now this we assert, and the proof is 
abundant and at hand, that it is as easy an un- 
dertaking to prove the existence of Jesus as of 
Julius Caesar, and the genuineness and authen- 
ticity of the Evangely than the genuineness and 
authenticity of the Commentaries. The internal 
and the external evidences are as clear and forci- 
ble, and much more abundant. 

In the evangelical history there is a concur- 
rence of testimony to the fact that Jesus Christ 
died. It was not supposed to be a mere tem- 
porary suspension of animation, as in a swoon, 
but a literal and complete giving up of the ghost. 
His disciples believed it, and it was so painfully 
impressive to their minds that they regarded it 
as the blasting of their budding hopes and the 
termination of the new religion. They had 



of Jon as. 



"trusted that it had been He which should have 
redeemed Israel." The very tense used by the 
disciple in this remark is indicative of the effect 
which the death of their Master had upon the 
minds of his followers. The Jews and the Roman 
officers believed that he was dead. When they 
went out to see if He and the malefactors had 
expired, that they might take them down before 
the Sabbath, they broke the legs of the malefac- 
tors, but they were so perfectly convinced that 
Jesus was dead that they spared themselves this 
trouble : and by this very course they unwittingly 
fulfilled the prophecy, "A bone of him shall not 
be broken." But, to make assurance doubly 
sure, a Roman soldier pierced His side, "and 
forthwith came there out blood and water." 
Where can a case be cited of a man retaining 
life after his heart has been ruptured? The 
annals of science, and the absurd stories of 
monkish literature, do not, as far as I know, 
furnish an instance. But notice these facts. 
Supposing Christ to have still retained life up to 
the time when the legs of the malefactors were 
broken, yet the circumstances which attended 
the thrusting of the soldier's spear into His side 
show that He must have expired then. Medical 
writers tell us that there is a small portion of 
water (or, as they call it, lymph) existing in the 
pericardium, and that the bloody and watery 
liquor is found in the cavities of the side (pleura) 
after a stab in the pleura, when the membrane 
which incloses the heart has been pierced, and 
that such a stab is always mortal. The body 
of Christ then was as perfectly dead as any 
corpse which presses the battle-field or crumbles 
in our churchyards. 

" He was crucified, dead, and buried !" 

Then, if His disciples were not the wildest 
enthusiasts, one of these three propositions 
must, in the nature of things, be true : 

1. He remained in the grave until the third 
day, — and in the acknowledged possession of the 
Jews, and of the officers ; or, 

2. He was stolen from the sepulchre ; or, 

3. He arose from the dead. 

Let us examine these propositions in their 
order, remembering that we are not any more 
bound to prove the resurrection of Christ than 
those who deny it are bound to show either that 
He was stolen from the grave or was in posses- 
sion of the Jews and Romans until after the 
third day succeeding His burial. 

1. Did the corpse of Jesus Christ remain in 
the grave until the third day, and in the acknowl- 
edged possession of the Jews and of the officers ? 

If it did, then Christianity falls, for the doc- 



The Sign of Jonas. 



137 



trine of the resurrection is completely refuted. 
But it is impossible to show this, and the facts 
in the case show that it is not true. The Roman 
officers had no particular interest in retaining 
Him, except so far as, for selfish ends, they may 
have come under the influence of the Jews. But 
the Jews had everything at stake. They saw 
that if the people could be induced to believe 
that Jesus had risen, the arguments from proph- 
ecy and miracle would combine to give the 
new religion a rapid propagation, and a per- 
petuity. It is manifest, that if they could have 
retained and exhibited the body three or four 
days, Christ's claims to the Messiahship would 
have been completely destroyed, and this poor 
and pitiful imposture would have utterly expired. 
They seemed to be aware of this. 11 The chief 
priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate, 
saying, — Sir, we remember that that deceiver 
said, while he was yet alive, After three days I 
will rise again. Command, therefore, that the 
sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest 
his disciples come by night and steal him away, 
and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: 
so the last error shall be worse than the first." 

Did they make it so sure until the third day as 
to retain the body ? If so. when the disciples 
preached Jesus and the Resurrection, why did 
they not call the multitude to see the well-known 
corpse ? Why did not some, and even many of 
that multitude, when the Gospels and Epistles 
were first published among the people, give 
their testimony to the truth, and show upon how 
grand a lie Paul and Peter, and others of the 
apostles, were attempting to erect a superstruc- 
ture of error? This thing was not done in a 
corner. In the presence of thousands, upon the 
very spot where it was said to have occurred, 
they declared themselves witnesses of the resur- 
rection of Jesus. Did any witness of the multi- 
tudes around them arise to deny? Is it to be 
supposed that Christianity could have survived 
the refutation of this bold pretension ? Or, is it 
to be supposed, in a controversy on which hung 
so many and such important interests, that no 
vestiges of counteracting testimony have come 
down to us, when there were so many interested 
in disseminating and perpetuating it, while we 
have received the whole body of luminous evi- 
dence to the statement that Christ rose from the 
dead ? It is easier to believe in the resurrection 
than to receive this. No, my friends, the Jews 
themselves never said that He remained in the 
grave, never offered to produce His dead body. 
All their statements and arguments presuppose 
that He could not be found there on the third day. 



2. If the first supposition must be abandoned, 
we are compelled to choose between the belief 
that he was stolen from the sepulchre, and the 
belief that he arose from the dead. 

Was he stolen ? 

We will first call to mind the fact that the sep- 
ulchre was made sure by sealing the stone, and 
setting a watch. It must not be forgotten that this 
occurred at the celebration of the passover, when 
the moon was at its full ; full as it was last week 
when it streamed down the avenues and streets 
of our city, and it was on the second night of a 
great feast, when the city was crowded, and the 
theft could have been easily detected. We must 
suppose that a matter of such surpassing interest 
was filling the minds and the mouths of the mul- 
titudes, and that they were waiting with anxious 
solicitude to see the termination of so wonder- 
ful a matter. Christ was to rise, or the impos- 
ture was to be exploded. They must all have 
felt too deeply interested to have suffered the 
body to be quietly taken away. These things 
may be said of the difficulties of the theft in 
general. 

But, if stolen, who stole the body? 

It must have been either the Jews or the disci- 
ples, the foes or the friends of Christianity. 

On the supposition that the Jews abstracted 
the body from the grave, the difficult question 
again arises : why did they not produce the 
dead body? But, indeed, the Jews had no mo- 
tive in removing the body ; if they could pre- 
vent the disciples from obtaining it, their end 
was gained. Indeed, it is so improbable that 
the Jews committed such a theft, that our ques- 
tion almost answers itself in the negative. 

Did the disciples steal it ? The Jews so 
charged them, on the authority of the Roman 
guard. Let us look at that authority. 

If the body was taken away, it was done when 
the guard were awake or when they were asleep. 
If awake, they must have been overpowered or 
bribed; — but the disciples of Christ were few, 
and by no means courageous, and certainly 
poor ; how then could they overpower or bribe 
a company of Roman soldiery ? And it is not 
probable that the guard slept. What ! a num- 
ber of armed men, on a moonlight night, when 
the city was full, being on watch over a dead 
body whose dying throes had agonized all na- 
ture, and convulsed the elements; when they 
were expecting to see prodigies every hour, and 
when they knew that to slumber at their posts, 
on this occasion, by Roman law was death; 
— that they, every one, had fallen asleep and 
slept unanimously, soundly, and long, while the 



1SS 



The Sign of Jonas. 



seal of the grave was broken, and the stone 
rolled away, and the body removed ! It is a 
supposition that would choke the greediest 
credulity ! But, if the guard were asleep, then 
they could have known nothing of the matter, 
and their testimony was worthless. But even 
this testimony was bought. When the body 
was gone they knew that by the law they must 
die, and so they told all that had happened; 
but finding that they should receive pay, and 
what was more, that a powerful interference 
would be made in their behalf, that they could 
but lose their lives whether they told the truth 
or not, and might probably save their lives by 
asserting a falsehood, they said that the disci- 
ples stole him while they slept ! 

But there are other difficulties here. If the 
disciples stole him, why were they not arrested ? 
They did not flee, but boldly preached the resur- 
rection. Why were they not arrested for break- 
ing the government seal ? There was a charge 
which would have blasted their reputation, and 
put an end to their labors and their lives. The 
bare fact that they were not arrested shows, at 
least, that the Jews had no proof of their guilt. 

Is it probable, from what we know of the char- 
acter of the men, that they were likely to engage 
in an act of this kind ? They were plain men, 
without cunning, without many friends, without 
wealth. They appeared to be honest to a de- 
gree, and by nature cowardly to a fault. Judas 
had betrayed, Peter (the most courageous) had 
denied, and all had forsaken their Lord in the 
hour of peril. What sudden power was it, what 
element of human character, that brought them 
together and furnished the unanimity, the skill, 
and the daring to accomplish so hazardous and 
bootless a performance ? Their Head was cut off. 
Some of them seem to have believed that, at the 
last, He would rescue Himself from His enemies ; 
but then He was a mangled and ignominious 
corpse in the grave. They had not yet recov- 
ered from the stupor of grief in which His death 
had left them. And what good, I pray, would 
the presence of that dead body have done them ? 
A sign of shame and of misplaced confidence, 
the monument, the embodiment of their hope- 
lessness, they would have hurried it out of 
their sight. 

I have said that one of these three proposi- 
tions must be true, if his disciples were not the 
wildest of enthusiasts. I know that some, who 
give them the credit of being good, honest men, 
affect to think that they were weak, and actually 
labored under the hallucination of a belief in the 
resurrection of their master. In repl) to that, I 



ask why did not the Jews charge them with 
that, instead of constantly charging the fraud ? 
And, is it possible that so many could be mis- 
taken as to a bodily appearance? He was seen 
by Mary Magdalene, who loved Him passion- 
ately and must have known Him ; by His early 
and intimate friend Peter, by the two disciples 
on the way to Emmaus, by the twelve, by five 
hundred brethren at once, and by Saul as he 
went to Damascus. 

Be it observed, that these persons, so far as 
we can learn, were not disposed to be credulous. 
Christ frequently upbraided them for their unbe- 
lief. The last mentioned was a man of enlarged 
mind and polished intellect, and for three days 
he bore on his person the mark of blindness, 
occasioned by the sight of Jesus. Could so 
many persons be so deceived about a body which 
they saw and heard, and felt ; one who handed 
them bread which they ate, and gave them large 
discourse, and laid his hand in theirs ? Thomas 
was as incredulous as any man, but his infidelity 
at last gave way before the power of evidence. 
It is easier to believe in the resurrection than be- 
lieve that so many were deceived. 

And look at their unwavering unanimity ! 
They vary in nothing for a moment. There is 
no fact upon which testimony was ever called, in 
which a large number of persons have so won- 
drously agreed in statement. And we are accus- 
tomed upon this point to cite the sufferings and 
labors of the disciples as a proof that they 
were neither combining in an imposture nor 
yielding to a deception. Was it ever known 
that men adhered to the statement of a known 
falsehood, or what they did not certainly 
know to be true, when that falsehood did them 
no good, but an injury; when such adherence, 
without present profit, or hope of future good^ 
involved loss of caste, reputation, wealth and 
ease ? It is impossible to suppose that so many 
men could do so. If the dead body was in their 
possession, its presence would unnerve such a 
determination ; if it was not with them, they had 
nothing to kindle and keep their enthusiasm 
glowing. 

Trying this question, then, by the common 
rules of testimony, we repeat, that unless the 
disciples were wilder enthusiasts than history or 
fiction anywhere presents, in the nature of things, 
as the body of Christ was crucified, dead, and 
buried ; and as on the third morning he was not 
in the grave, and could not have been either in 
the hands of the Jews, or in possession of his dis- 
ciples ; and as there are only three cases that can 
be supposed, and two are shown to be impossi- 



The Sign of Jonas. 



139 



ble; — we must give up all reliance upon human 
memory and human testimony, or be irresistibly 
driven to the conclusion, that JESUS CHRIST 
AROSE FROM THE DEAD 

Thus, then, was the type of the prophet Jonas 
fulfilled in the person of our Lord, and the most 
powerful possible proof of His divinity afforded. 
Now, if we do not hearken to the teachings of 
this Risen Redeemer, we give proof that we 
would not listen to the voice of the great God 
speaking to us individually from the skies. 
" The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment 
with this generation and shall condemn it : be- 
cause they repented at the preaching of Jonas, 
and behold a greater than Jonas is here." The 
prophet Jonah was disobedient, peevish, and un- 
lovely. Flying from the face of God, he was 
cast into the sea and became a type of our 
Lord, by being three days and nights in the 
whale's belly. He then conveyed the mes- 
sage to Nineveh, in which there were six score 
thousand persons, and cried aloud that in forty 
days the city should be destroyed. Impressed 
by the miracle of his preservation, the king and 
the people gave themselves to repentance and 
fasting and prayer. The Lord had pity upon 
them and spared them ; and this act of divine 
clemency, which should have moved the prophet 
to adore the goodness of God, aroused in him a 
spirit of bitter complaining. His reputation as 
a prophet was at stake, and he would have had 
an hundred and twenty thousand people perish 
that he might seem to have spoken the truth in 
the delivery of a conditional threatening from 
God, in the fulfillment of which he had no per- 
gonal interest. And yet, at the preaching of 



such a man as this, and to avoid the loss of 
their city and the pains of temporal death, the 
whole people, from the king to the beggar, re- 
pented in sackcloth, and found the mercy of 
God. And yet, the men of this generation, the 
men of wit and learning, the men of mind and 
information and thought, pay no attention to 
the Lord of life and glory, who conquered death 
for them, and with a heart of infinitely profound 
benevolence is warning them of impending de- 
struction. Can it be possible? The proof of 
Jonah's miraculous escape and the consequent 
assurance of his divine commission were strong ; 
but that most stupendous miracle which adorns 
the annals of the universe, and which has for its 
proof the most powerful, luminous, and perfect 
body of testimony in the whole range of moral 
evidence, comes to our understandings after the 
lapse of eighteen centuries, in which it has been 
scrutinized by friend and foe, and again and 
again dissected by the light of all learning and 
the scalpel of most impartial criticism, and still 
stands surrounded by the impenetrable bulwark 
of the most compact and unanswerable argu- 
ment. If this shall fail to arrest our attention 
and fix our faith on Jesus, as His word is true, 
when we shall stand at the judgment-seat, there 
shall come trooping up against us six score 
thousand souls from Nineveh, and hundreds 
from Jerusalem, and the men of learning in the 
intermediate centuries, and the blessed martyrs 
of all ages in the holy cause, and they shall con- 
demn us : for they repented at the preaching of 
Jonas, and bore witness to the truth as it is in 
Jesus ; but a greater than Jonas, even the Truth 
Himself, is here in His Holy Word. • 



XXIII. 

fitting in f tm. 

"THE LIGHT OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE GLORY OF GOD IN THE FACE OF JESUS CHRIST."— 

2 CORINTHIANS, IV. 6. 



IF men have prejudices against God the serv- 
ants of God cannot expect to escape misunder- 
standings and contumely. 

They befell Paul. 

No other man seems ever to have given plainer 
proofs of his devotion to what he considered the 
truth and the interests of the race than did this 
man Paul. No one seems less a self-seeker, less 
crafty, less intent on promoting his personal 
ease, emolument, and fame. And yet, through 
the whole of his wonderful Apostolate, he was 
misunderstood, misrepresented, maligned, and 
persecuted. He was charged with dishonesty, 
with handling the word of God deceitfully, with 
failing to preach the Gospel frankly and faith- 
fully. 

But, he " fainted not," and therein is an exam- 
ple to all his brethren of the aftertimes, who 
must endure the same discipline. 

Nevertheless, he earnestly protested against 
such misrepresentation. He did not seek his 
own : he sought the glory of the Lord. He did 
not deceive his hearers: he " used great plain- 
ness, unreservedness, of speech," as he says in 
the preceding chapter. He did not play the 
priest, and by tricks add names to the list of the 
professors of Christianity; he commended him- 
self to every man's conscience in the sight of 
God. He did not seek to lord it over men's 
consciences, but considered himself the "slave" 
of others, humbling himself to a servile position, 
so that he might promote the spread of the Gos- 
pel for the good of men and for the glory of God. 

If, then, men could not see the glory of God in 
Jjsus, the fault was no longer in the Gospel nor 
in the preacher, but in the hearer : the veil was 
on the hearer's heart. 

It was because he had seen the glory of God 
shining in the face of Jesus Christ that Paul 
made such exertions of body and mind to bring 
others to that greatest and best possible knowl- 
edge. He did not preach what he did not know. 
He was not a mere professional. He was not 
merely filling engagements. He was enraptured 



with a most brilliant discovery. He had seen 
the thing most worth seeing. He had beheld 
what thrilled the spiritual world with delight, 
and what was finally to cover the human race 
with illumination. It was " glory." It was " the 
glory of God." It was " the glory of God shin- 
ing" where men could look at it, study it, come 
to a knowledge of it. 

Now, to make any other human being behold 
that sight seemed to Paul to be worth the work of a 
lifetime. Therefore he forgot himself, and knew 
only Jesus. Therefore he never preached him- 
self, but only Jesus. He was willing to bear 
everything if he could only secure this end. 

It is to be always remembered that ministers 
do not make the objects of faith. These exist. 
They stand out in the universe. They are facts. 
They do not depend upon being believed by 
men. No man may believe in their existence, 
but that has not the least effect on their exist- 
ence. Whatever controversies may rage among 
men on the question as to whether there be any 
sun, there is the sun in the heavens all the same. 
The distant fixed stars were as ponderous and as 
bright before the instruments of astronomy 
brought the knowledge of their existence to men 
as they were after. Our knowledge, as our igno- 
rance, did not touch these facts. But it did 
touch the facts of our existence. 

It does make a difference with us whether we 
know a fact or not. The existence of God does 
not depend upon our knowing it, but we are 
greatly affected by our knowledge or ignorance 
of that -largest fact in all the universe. The 
work of a Christian minister is not to make a 
truth, a saving truth, but it is to discover what 
are saving truths, and to make those saving 
truths known to his fellow-men. To attempt to 
make men believe as a saving truth some propo- 
sition which does not embody a truth, but does 
contain an idea which, if received, will give the 
teacher thereof power over his fellow-man, this 
is a species of priestcraft, and all priestcraft is 
despicable. But to strive to make a man know 



God's Glory shining in Jesus. 



141 



what really does exist is to give the highest 
proof of disinterested philanthropy. 

It is not very difficult to make men understand 
the statement, " There is a God." Indeed, when 
once heard, all nature pours in on the most ob- 
tuse intellect and the most careless mind such 
abounding proofs of its truth that it is kept be- 
fore the eyes of men. But, grandest and most 
fundamental fact as that is, it is a most barren 
fact in its abstract statement. 

The truth is, that abstractions have little 
power on the human imagination, on the heart, 
and on the life. Men must have something- 
concrete. They must have a notion of a being 
or a thing, not as it is in the intellect of the 
thinker, but as it is in nature, with its qualities ; 
or they must have the quality or the attribute 
as it consists with some substance, some thing, 
some being. It is so in earliest childhood, and 
so down to latest old age. You, many of you 
learned and accomplished people, would to-day 
be more interested in a fable, a tale, a picture, a 
simile, that carries the truth concretely than the 
most perfect presentation of abstract ideas of 
truth. It was knowledge of this which crowded 
the preaching of Jesus with parables or fables, 
and which makes the sparkle and splendor of 
any human language. 

We want to " realize" everything. It is a 
greater and loftier thing to idealize : but life is 
too short to do much of that. We are yet in 
the swaddling bands of our bodily senses. He 
seems to do us most good who makes us "see" 
anything or "feel" anything. 

It is so of God, our Father. It would never 
have been of any use to us to tell us that God is 
father, if the relation between human father and 
child had not been made. Men whose minds 
are the most thoroughly disciplined have an ex- 
treme difficulty in conceiving the abstract idea 
of so simple a relation as "father;" but every 
child in this church knows enough of its mean- 
ing to make God dear to him, because con- 
cretely, that is, in nature, in a real man, he 
has seen exhibited the characteristics of father- 
hood. 

The whole nature of man demands a concrete 
God. 

We cannot live on thin abstractions. We 
must know and see and hear and feel our God. 
When the best human intellect has done its 
mightiest to comprehend the abstract ideas of 
power, wisdom, truth, and love, and the abstract 
idea of God ; and, going further, joined, as best 
it may, those attributes with that being, it has 
what does not come down to its home, its heart, 



its business. God must manifest Himself, or He 
can be of little comfort to us. 
God is. What of that ? 

God is spirit. That is a great step forward, 
because I know by myself somewhat of spirit. 

But if I am halted there, there is still a great 
chasm between God and me. If I can come no 
nearer to my Heavenly Father, I am still a great 
way off. God is still a vague ideal. He must 
be brought nearer, or the very idea is useless to 
me. What are power, wisdom, holiness, and 
love, if there be no mighty, wise, holy, and loving 
Being? What can we know of those attributes? 
We must attach them to some perso7i. 

Now, suppose that person be only spirit : in 
that case our minds are somewhat helped ; but 
not much. He must come nearer. He must 
in some way be human. 

Can you keep yourselves from imagining 
God? Is He not some person to you ? Do you 
know any intellect so constituted and so trained 
that when " God" is spoken in its presence there 
is only a vague idea of a formless, fashionless, 
infinite existence that was never created? • 

Let us take a long step down and ask a lower 
question : Do you think you are capable of 
forming a fair abstract notion of goodness ? 
Whenever "good" or "goodness" is uttered to 
your ears, do you not instantly think of some 
good person f 

Let us go still lower and ask another ques- 
tion: When the word " light" is heard by you, 
what does it bring to your mind ? Do you not 
immediately see in your mental vision some 
bright substance ? Did you ever think of 
"weight" apart from some heavy matter, or of 
"fragrance" apart from some thing that has a 
pleasant scent? 

Answer these questions to yourselves, and 
then come back to the great subject of religion, 
the most important and impressive of all sub- 
jects, and ask yourselves whether an Incarnate 
God is not a necessity of man ? Can we have 
any controlling religion which does not recognize 
the idea of a concrete God as its basis ? 

We are sometimes hard on the idolaters. The 
avatars of the Hindoo deities seem to us to 
prove a very low intellectual condition in the 
worshippers. The crucifix and the image of 
the Blessed Virgin before which our Roman 
Catholic servants as well as learned divines and 
refined princesses bow, and before which they 
become absorbed in prayer, seem to some of us 
very degrading things. But let us be careful to 
know only the truth. Do not all these things 
go to show the demand in man's nature for some 



14% s God's Glory shining in Jesus. 



visible manifestation of God, that God should 
somehow be manifested in the flesh ? Was there 
ever a time when men did not give to God 
a name and a local habitation? Take the his- 
tory of the Jewish form of religion with which 
you are acquainted, and from it make an answer 
to that question. Did not the Jewish religion, 
the purest and earliest monotheism, have its 
Shekinah, a visible symbol of the residence 
of the Deity? And were not its heart and 
hopes kept alive by the expectation of the Mes- 
siah ? 

I ventured to say some time ago that the in- 
carnation of God is a blessed necessity of the 
divine spirit, that God would yearn to identify 
Himself with His human children. It seems to 
oe equally a necessity of human nature. If we 
really and truly have a Father, we must be able 
to clasp his feet in our penitence, and to lean on 
his breast in our weary sorrowfulness. If He 
be God we must see exhibitions of what we be- 
lieve to be divine. If He be glorious, we must 
see His glory. It must shine in something or in 
some person, whom we can apprehend, or else 
we can never have knowledge of the glory of 
God. 

"Where does that glory shine ? Paul says that 
" the light of the knowledge of the glory of 
God is in the face of Jesus Christ." Let us 
regard a few of the characteristics of the glory 
of God shining in Jesus. 

I. In Jesus shone the glory of God's power. 

Mere force is frightful. It displaces. It 
breaks up. When there is personal safety to a 
man the sight of the exertion of great power is 
interesting because of its greatness and the vast 
results ; but if he connect himself with those 
results and consider an unknown powerful per- 
son as working in the world about him, the man 
does not know what will next befall, and may 
befall him. 

" The heavens declare the glory of God," be- 
cause they show power on the side of order. 
They proclaim that He who made them and 
who rules them is the promoter of order. Their 
stability and regularity are such exhibitions of 
power as give assurance to men, so that men can 
go forward on their ways of business or pleasure. 

But beyond that there is nothing glorious, 
nothing to touch the sensibilities, nothing that 
connects God personally with us. The light of 
stars is cold. The celestial spaces are indescri- 
bably cold. 

Pantheism is the vaguest faith there is. When 
a man becomes a Pantheist his soul is like water 
spilt on the sand, which cannot be gathered up 



again. We want something personal and sym- 
pathetic. 

Jesus Christ came and showed that He had all 
the power that men have supposed God had, 
power to do what He would with matter and 
with spirit. He changed water into wine. He 
multiplied bread in a way to show that He could 
as easily create a globe of bread as large as this 
planet, or a globe of anything else. He ruled 
the billows when they rolled. He reined the 
invisible winds with the ease and facility of 
volition. He saw all that was passing in men's 
minds. The devils were subject to him. No 
human being needs a god in time or in eternity 
more powerful than Jesus Christ. He claimed 
that all power in heaven and earth was His, and 
so far as we can see it was so. 

But the full glory of the power of God never 
shone forth until Jesus appeared. We never 
learned before that this power was never exer- 
^ cised in blind wrath, that omnipotence was the 
right arm of the Person who is our Father, that 
every outgo of power was from an impulse of 
love. It was awful before. It is glorious now. 
It never shone in glory as it did when Jesus hung 
upon the cross. 

He might, during His life, have ministered to 
His own selfish wants. But He did not. 

He might, at His trial, have darkened the 
judgment-hall and smitten His mockers with 
blindness, and tumbled Caiaphas's temple and 
Pilate's palace into the maw of a gaping earth- 
quake. But He did not. 

He might have sent from His cross a thrill 
which should have dissolved this planet, and 
flung its light dust through the measureless 
spaces. But He did not. The power was never 
used, except for the benefit of the weaker and at 
the bidding of love. That omnipotence is al- 
ways under the restraint of love has been demon- 
strated by Jesus, and that demonstration is what 
makes God's power glorious. 

2. In Jesus shone the glory of God's wisdom. 

The writers on Natural Religion, as it is called, 
are fond of calling attention to the signs of con- 
trivance and adaptation in nature, showing skill 
and foresight. The argument is very strong; 
the illustrations are very ample. Great ends 
and great means to reach those ends were evi- 
dently known to the Creator of the Universe. 

And yet this whole argument lies almost alto- 
gether on the plane of the material. It was a 
display of skill and power in the upbuilding of a 
splendid tent, whose pins must rot and whose 
poles must fall, and whose curtains must drop 
into " ruinous decay." There was still the ques 



God's Glory shining in Jesus. 



tion of the soul's immortality. There was still a 
vast eternity stretching beyond. There was still 
possible to man's conception something finer 
than the finest form of matter. What is it ? 
What is its destiny ? How does it stand connected 
with God ? 

These speculative questions would be recur- 
ring perplexities to the minds of men. But 
there is something more perplexing and entirely 
practical. There was the fact of sin, the black 
fact in every man's history. There was the bit- 
terness of sinfulness, a dire taint in every man's 
blood. What was to become of this fact and 
this element of human nature ? They are not 
accidents ; they are not excrescences. If they 
were the one, man might extricate himself; if 
the other, he might cut them off. 

What to do with sin is the profoundest prob- 
lem possible to man, and, so far as he can see, 
possible to God. Making worlds is one thing: 
saving souls is another. And the latter requires 
infinite wisdom. A short measure would be to 
sweep all sinners from existence instantaneously. 
But if sinners can be kept in existence, and sin, 
in its principle and in its fact, can be purged, this 
would set the wisdom of God in the light of the 
greatest glory. It would save the highest ideal 
of the great God from the terrible disfigurement 
of the sight of His being obliged to annihilate 
the most exquisite product of His power, because 
it had sustained an injury which His wisdom 
could neither prevent nor repair. 

This is precisely the manner in which the 
glory of God's wisdom shines in the face of Jesus 
Christ. If it was wisdom to create, it is the 
glory of wisdom to save. 

And this glory shines more and more resplen- 
dently when we recollect that God's authority 
and free-will, and man's honor, self-respect, and 
free-will, are all preserved. To kill the sin and 
save the sinner — the wisdom that can do this is 
glorious. It shone in the face of Jesus Christ. 

Nothing so magnifies our conception of God's 
infinite resources of wisdom as that He could 
skill to find a measure which should preserve 
His character of justice without the stain of 
harshness, and of goodness without the suspi- 
cion of weakness, and which should, at the same 
time, bring man from sin without arbitrarily in- 
terfering with his free-will, and establish him in 
righteousness on the basis of the highest virtue. 

When one believes that God was in Christ, 
and in Christ was reconciling the world unto 
Himself, it places sin in so bad a light and God 
in so good a light that men are " brought to 
God" by being induced to come to God. Thus 



out of the apparent wreck and ruin and wretch- 
edness of sin there has been brought what con- 
firms and beautifies the relation between the 
eternal father and the immortal child. 

No such glory of God's wisdom had men or 
angels ever seen before. 

3. In Jesus shone the glory of God's truth- 
fulness. 

The veracity of God consists in His standing 
by what He said, whether of promise or of threat, 
in His being unalterable and perfectly trust- 
worthy, so,that men may feel forever that heaven 
may pass away, and earth, but that not a tittle, 
not a jot, of God's word shall in any way fail. 
This perfect truthfulness is necessary to keep our 
ideal of God unbroken ; for trustlessness, variable- 
ness of speech, falsehood, are imperfections ; and 
we cannot conceive an imperfect Perfection. It 
is necessary for man's ordering of his conduct 
in this present world. He would otherwise walk 
in quicksands which would swallow him up. He 
must have solid ground. 

But the truth of God is something quite hard 
and awful, after all. The immutability of phys- 
ical laws is tremendously terrible. A contem- 
plation of their operations often makes a man 
feel as if he were a grain of wheat being ground 
in mills which there is no contrivance and no 
force to stop — mills that grind on and on and 
on, driven by the ceaseless strokes of omnipo- 
tence. 

There is a finer fearfulness in the immutability 
of the moral laws. As certain as the laws of 
nature, they are invisible and noiseless. There 
is a startling description in Hebrews, fourth 
chapter and twelfth verse: " The law' of God 
is alive and active, and sharper than any two- 
edged sword." This invariability of God's truth- 
fulness sometimes becomes frightful to men. It 
seems like dead machinery, or else like a living 
thing that is most regular, most true, but ut- 
terly heartless. The truth of God in the opera- 
tion of the physical and spiritual laws of the 
universe, so far as they are known outside the 
cross of Jesus, is very awful. This truth is very 
necessary and very sublime, but very uncom- 
fortable and very oppressive. 

When, however, Jesus demonstrates that 
every word of God comes of love, that every 
physical and moral law comes from love, that 
nothing is threatened except from love even as 
nothing is promised except from love, then the 
truth of God becomes glorious. Before Jesus 
came, we had much reason to suppose — as now, 
if we look at it aside from Jesus, it will still ap- 
pear — that God's truth is a dark chain that holds 



144 



God's Glory shining in Jesus. 



Him back from helping His children when they 
go into sin and despair, that there He must 
stand and see us drop out of the line of order 
and upward progress, down into descending 
horrors and badnesses, because God must be 
true if the universe be lost. 

But when God came in the flesh and bore our 
sorrows and carried our griefs, and fulfilled the 
whole law in the person of a man who kept him- 
self from all sin, and showed that not only was 
Omnipotence and Omniscience the servants of 
Love, but that Truth as well existed for Love's 
sake, that there is no element of unfeelingness 
in any attribute of our Heavenly Father, then 
the glory of the Truth of God was seen by men 
and angels shining in the face of Jesus. 

4. In Jesus shone the glory of God's love. 

In ^very other manifestation of what 'we may 
call the love of God there seems something if not 
quite contradictory, yet puzzling, a drawback of 
lofty s elfishness. 

All the mighty and beautiful productions of 
His hand which we see about us, seem to be 
precious to Him for His own sake. He made 
them. They are wonderfully made. As His 
creatures He cares for them. Their creation 
and preservation are a delight to the great heart 
of the great Creator. But He does not love 
them for themselves. 

There is in men a fondness for the works of 
their hands. He who contrives and constructs a 
piece of machinery of wonderful beauty, power, 
and adaptability, comes to love the senseless 
combination of wood and metal. 

A painter will love the very canvas on which 
he has put in pigment the picture of his soul, 
having realized his ideal through years of study 
and effort. 

A sculptor will fall in love with the unrecipro- 
cating beauty his mind has conceived and his 
hands have chiselled from the cold marble. 

But these are only exhibitions of a refined 
self-love. The artist and the machinest love 
these things because they made them. If they 
had been the productions of other hands they 
would have excited perhaps only admiration. 
But this is better than no love. When a man 
loves man or woman simply because of some tie 
of blood or favor, it is better than no love. But 
it is not the glory of love. 

The glory of loving is when you love some one 
for his own sake, or her own sake, and you can- 
not help it, but will love on and on with most 
unselfish passion — a passion which distance can- 
not dim, no oceans drown, nor death destroy ; a 
passion that has no ulterior end, and does not 



live by returns of love, but loves on, even when 
unloved, and expends itself in surrounding the 
unappreciating object with unappreciated guard- 
ianship of tenderness and devotion, — thinking 
nothing too good for the beloved, willing to be 
poor that the beloved maybe rich, willing to suf- 
fer that the beloved may have ease; feeling that 
it would be the loftiest possible happiness to win 
the love of the beloved, and determined to wear 
eternity away in striving to win that love ; a pas- 
sion which is not blind, but sees every fault and 
knows every defect, and yet clings to the beloved 
with an attachment which is stronger than death 
and sweeter than life. This is the glory of a 
true, grand love. 

And this is the glory of God's love shining in 
the face of Jesus. 

We are free in our wills, as free as God. Ke 
has something to love which may return His 
affection, or neglect it, or reject it. He has 
\ something to win, for we are not machines. He 
has something which can appreciate his love, 
not senseless stars that make music and sing 
praises only to the ear of philosophy and poetry. 
He has something that can reject His love and 
fly from Him. 

Herein does Jesus show the glory of the love 
of God. We had scorned it, we had repaid it 
with gross neglect and outrageous ingratitude. 
We were not only forgetful of God, we were ab- 
solutely opposed to Him. And yet He loved 
us. Jesus shows that. If we had been mere 
machines and would not work according to His 
designs, he might have destroyed us. But He 
follows us with surpassing displays of divine, 
unappeasable affection. He will not give us up. 
He is determined to win us. He will love us, 
even if we hate Him. He will heap favors upon 
us if we curse Him. 

There is nothing so pathetic as the cross. It 
is the sight of the lover slain by the hand of the 
loved one, and slain for loving. 

O, dear brethren, let me beseech you to strive 
to realize this. In tender memory of Christ's 
divine devotion to our race, strive to think how 
hard it was for Him, and how bad it was in us, 
that He should thus die. If He had been an infi- 
nite Hater, who had incarnated Himself for a 
mission of mischief, and we could have caught 
Him and nailed Him to the cross, it of course 
would have been an impotent thing. We should 
not have extinguished hate in the infinite heart. 
We should, however, have made the feeble pro- 
test of our race against hatred. 

But when He loves us, and comes to us with 
a yearning heart and a wooing way, and seeks 



God's Glory shining in Jesus. 



145 



to win our love by all sweetest advances of holiest 
and loftiest affection, and when we, with wicked, 
unloving hands do murder Him, we cannot quench 
His love. He sends down from the cross such 
indescribably sweet looks of love, as if He were 
saying in His heart, O, I would rather have these 
tearing nails and piercing thorns from your dear 
hands than take the softest and brightest crown 
from the hands of any other beings. 

This is the supreme glory of love. There was 
never anything like it in all the universe before. 
The angels that had worshipped Him had never 
seen such love. He had never so revealed Him- 
self to them. They knew He was good. They 
knew that He delighted in the happiness of His 
children and of His creatures, but they had never 
seen Divine Love put to such trial before, and 
rise to such radiance. Then they saw the glory 
of God, the glory of His power, the glory of His 
wisdom, the glory of His truth, and the glory of 
His love, shining in the face of Jesus. It streamed 
down all time and through all the universe. No 
world He ever made, no throne He ever erected, 
no rank of angels He ever created, so reflects 
His glory as The Cross. 

Do you fail to see this, my brother? That 
does not alter the fact of the glory, but it does 
argue such a wonderful insensibility on your 
part ! It does show that you are losing the best 
sight of the universe. It does show that you 



are blind in your hearts. For, " if our gospel 
be hid it is hid to them that are lost, in whom 
the god of this world has blinded the minds of 
them that believe not, lest the light of the glo- 
rious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, 
should shine unto them." But ''God, who com- 
manded the light to shine out of darkness, hath 
shined into our hearts," and will shine into 
yours, "to give the light of the knowledge of 
the glory of God, shining in the face of Jesus." 

Do not refuse to have your eyes opened. Do 
not say, This sight is for others and not for me. 
Do not say, I have no genius for religion : I 
lack the religious temperament. Chaos had no 
genius for order, the primeval Night no genius 
for light. But God commanded the light to 
shine out of darkness, and the worlds were aglow 
with glory. So in our human night He caused 
the light of the Cross to shine. So in our hearts 
His Spirit shines. 

Do not shut your eyes. Do not come from 
Sunday to Sunday to hear of this light and satisfy 
your senses with that. Have your part in this 
glory. Now, reviewing the memorials of such 
love as God showed in Jesus, such giving of Him- 
self for you, now pray for light. Cry, with Bar- 
timeus, " Lord, that I might receive my sight !" 

And O may many of you this day feel the 
scales fall from your eyes and see Jesus, and see 
the glory of God shining in the face of Jesus. 



XXIV. 

" COMi, UNTO ME, ALL YE THAT LABOR, AND ARE HEAVY LADEN, AND I WILL GIVE YOU REST." 

MATTHEW, XI. 28. 



Each man is so absorbed in his own work, 
so pressed with his own burden, that he seldom 
has time to take a survey of the race. 

But when he does look about him, what a sight 
does the whole world present to him ! 

Everywhere are men and women and little 
children bearing burdens and engaged in toils. 
It begins so early. It lasts so long. It seems so 
wearisome. 

In very early life children begin their labors 
and yoke-bearing. We who are older forget 
how it was with us in the beginning of life, so 
that now the troubles and work of childhood 
seem to us so trivial that we lose our sympathy 
for the sorrows of the little people. But when 
we come to think how little strength they have 
and how narrow their horizon we perceive that 
their troubles and disappointments are as hard 
for them to bear, their labor as hard for them to 
perform, as ours is for us. They are put off for 
older people, they are crowded into corners, 
they are laughed at for their blunders and cor- 
rected for their mistakes, and made to run the 
errands of their seniors ; and little pains are 
usually taken to save them from disappoint- 
ments ; and often they are compelled to do for 
others what others should do for them. 

I declare to you, brethren, that there are few 
more pathetic sights in this great city to me 
than boys and girls of least size and most tender 
years, often poorly clad, engaged in little ped- 
dling processes, and sometimes sitting on the 
sidewalks counting the pennies in their dirty 
palms, — little creatures whose brains should not 
be bothered with so much as "two and two 
make four," calculating the gains of their labor, 
embryo, precocious, premature merchants and 
bankers. 

And so it goes through life. The school, the 
college, the farm, the shop, all employing our 
boys and young men. Hand work and brain 
work are begun with so little prospect of ever 
ending; for, even when wealth might seem able 
to purchase exemption, the habit of working is 
a harness whose buckles have rusted and we can- 
not get it off. 



The sea has its toilers and the land. Old 
men bow their white hairs over the work in 
which striplings are also engaged. All are 
laden. The rich as well as the poor, the healthy 
as well as the sick, the learned as well as the 
illiterate, parent and child, master and servant, 
king and subject, are all heavy laden, — laden in 
hands and brain and heart and back; in the 
yoke, in the harness, taxed for burden or for 
draught. Oh ! what a working, toiling, moiling, 
sweat-stained, weary world is this ! 
\ Jesus looks over it all, sees every beaten nerve, 
every fatigued muscle, every fainting heart. 
Over the roar of machinery and the calls of the 
workmen to one another, and the rush and bus- 
tle of the throbbing crowds, we hear His most 
musical invitation, "Come unto Me, all ye that 
labor, and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
rest." 

How authoritative this promise. It is the 
voice of One who knows the weight of each bur- 
den, and the pain condensed into each sigh, and 
the spot made sore by each yoke ; of One who 
feels that in Himself are such divine resources 
that He can lift every burden, heal every sore, 
and rest every heart. 

How comprehensive is this invitation. It takes 
the whole world in ; for at some period of every 
man's life he is laboring, at some period he is 
heavily laden. Is he ever not the one or the 
other ? 

How sweet are the invitation and the promise ! 
Come to Me. I will give you rest. Rest ! 
That is what we need and desire and pray for. 
Rest ! Rest of brain and heart especially we 
need. Some person must be able to give that. 
A bed of senseless down can rest our weary 
muscles, but our minds need a mind and our 
hearts need a heart for rest. Other human 
brains, even the healthiest and the most friendly, 
sometimes fail us. Other human hearts, even 
the sweetest, seem to fail to satisfy us. Jesus 
says, "Come to Me ! I will give you rest." 

And, dear brethren, He does not allow us to 
be ignorant of His manner of giving us rest. 
" Take my yoke upon you, and ye shall find rest 



Rest. 



147 



for your souls." Is there, then, no relief from 
yokes and burdens ? None. Even this very 
sweet invitation talks of a " yoke," but of a yoke 
that will give rest. 

Then, perhaps, we have been altogether mis- 
taken in our notions of rest ? We certainly 
have, if we have supposed that it meant a ces- 
sation of the activity of our faculties, a relapse 
into merely conscious inertness, a total pause in 
the exertion of our influence on the world out- 
side of us and in the culture of the world inside 
of us. Rest is simply the absence of a sense of 
pain, or disagreeableness, in our work ; it is not 
the absence of work. 

Now Jesus proposes to impart just that bless- 
ing to us, and He teaches us that we are to gain 
it by learning of Him, by taking His yoke, by 
working according to the law which He gives. 
The weariness comes not from working but from 
working in a wrong manner; not from the 
drudgeries and difficulties of this present life, 
but from our taking those drudgeries and diffi- 
culties by the wrong handle. It is not the bur- 
den ; it is the method of carrying it. It is not 
the load ; but it is the way we try to drag it. The 
yoke for the ox and the collar for the horse are 
heavy perhaps and unpleasant perhaps, but they 
could not draw their loads without some yoke 
and some collar. The light thing is not to throw 
all yokes away, but to find the yoke that is easy, 
and the contrivance which is light. Jesus says 
the faith in Him, obedience to Him, learning of 
Him, is the great secret of such easy working 
of the hands and brain and heart, that such 
working may be called rest. 

Let us look at some of the classes of the weary 
ones to whom this invitation and this promise 
come most refreshingly. 

First. There are the weary with overwork. 

Work itself is not a curse. It is a blessing 
rather. It is the condition of satisfaction and 
happiness. Our active faculties must have ac- 
tivity, or else we shall be quite unhappy. We 
were not made for dead inertness, like the life- 
less stones. Adam worked in innocency, with 
no sense of fatigue and pain, with just such 
change of muscular condition as made it a 
greater pleasure to pause while his body was 
changing its electric condition. Jesus describes 
the existence of God thus : "My Father work- 
eth hitherto, and I work." Up to one's capa- 
bilities work is good and pleasant and profit- 
able. It has not yet become toil and labor. 
There is no lacK of dignity in work, while labor 
and toil are undignified, because they are attempt- 
ing to accomplish what is beyond our powers. 



Whatever may seem to be a gain from overwork 
of muscle or brain, will be found in the end to 
be in reality a loss. We can do just so much in 
life — no more. The moment we pass that boun- 
dary we injure our constitution. 

The difference between a machine and a man 
is this : a machine cannot be overworked, an 
animal may be. As soon as you overload your 
machine it stops, or breaks down, or bursts. 
Your man may work on and not perceive the 
harm he is doing to himself. There is an elas- 
ticity in animal life which is not in dead matter, 
so that even a beast may overexert itself. In 
man there is the dominant will which pushes him 
further and further. He is not killed by what 
he is doing, and therefore feels as if he could do 
a little more, and a little more, and a little more, 
until he takes on himself that proverbial " last 
straw that breaks the camel's back. " 

The overwork of men, especially in this gen- 
eration, comes of three things. 

1. There is an overestimate of our wants. In 
any age and clime the real wants of man are 
very simple and very few ; so few and simple 
that after a long use of our civilization it becomes 
really a difficult task to separate, even in thought, 
our real from our factitious wants. Luxuries, 
after a long course of use, come to be regarded 
as necessaries. This is due, in cities espe- 
cially, and everywhere in some measure, to the 
rivalry of society. We must dress and eat and 
live as others. Our real happiness is not in- 
creased. The majority of all the rich people 
in New York have been poor, and the fathers 
of nearly all the rest were. The majority of the 
people who ride in carriages used to walk. If 
they would be honest with you, they would tell 
you that before there was a house built above 
Fourteenth Street, they used to live over their 
stores down town, the wife watching the shop 
through the little glass in the back door, while 
the husband went out to buy the dinner, and 
that really they were quite as happy then, when 
they walked their children on the Battery, as 
they are now, rolling through Central Park : for 
while their means have increased so have their 
wants. 

When the want is made it must be destroyed 
or be satisfied. You and I generally choose to 
satisfy it, and it wears us nearly to death to pro- 
cure the means. 

2. There is an overestimate of our powers. 
Hard work n^ver yet has killed us; we think 

it never will. Our friends warn us, but we have 
a vague idea of resting by-and-by, and think we 
can endure the strain a little longer. Men's 



148 



Rest. 



constitutions differ very much as the threads of 
thermometer tubes. You have two thermome- 
ters with the same size of bulb and the same bulk 
of mercury : the one has a very fine thread and 
the other a very coarse j little increase of heat 
will send up the mercury rapidly in the former, 
while you can. scarcely detect any rise in the lat- 
ter. Some men can almost instantly tell when 
they have gone far enough. Others do not 
know until it is too late, until the touch of paral- 
ysis shakes them or the softening of the brain 
makes them helpless. The air of a crowded 
and busy city is exciting. It stimulates us to 
over-exertion ; and, whatever may be the large- 
ness of our desires and the force of our wills, 
none of us are made of wrought iron and steel 
springs. 

3. Our modern civilization has a tendency to 
overwork us. 

We hear of labor-saving machines. There 
are none. You cannot make one. You may 
make " product-multiplying" machines. You 
may produce in ten minutes what would have 
cost you an hour ; but you will give your other 
fifty minutes to five other different things. We 
can travel ten times as fast as when we were 
boys. Do we spend only one-tenth as much 
time in travel ? Not at all : we go ten times as 
far, and then a little farther. The fact is, that 
railroads and telegraphs and steam-presses give 
one man the ability to do what it required more 
than half-a-dozen men to do. And we under- 
take it. And the more we do the more we 
strive to do. And we are growing breathless. 
We are laboring. We are heavy laden. 

What shall we do ? Shall we befool ourselves 
with saying that we have no time to be religious 
because of the press of our business ? A man 
might just as well refuse to take the train to 
Philadelphia because he is in too great a hurry 
to stop and enter the car. No. That is just 
what we must do. We must take Christ's yoke. 
No one needs it more than you who are carrying 
the burdens of large commercial affairs. Your 
comfort in your work depends upon it. 

Do your work for Jesus, not for Mammon. Do 
not strive to be rich simply that you may have 
the reputation of riches, that your children may 
dress gaily and you may indulge the lust of the 
eye and the pride of life. Some of you never 
take time for worship with your family, almost 
never go to a meeting for Christian intercourse 
and prayer, nor give an evening to soothe the 
sick, nor an hour to visit the prisoner, nor any 
attention to the great Christian societies. You 
are the pack-horses of business. Mammon's 



fags are you. And this is pressing you down. 
Now, try managing your railroads and banks 
and warehouses and shops and professional 
work for Christ, and see how quickly this conse- 
cration will rest you. 

Second. There is another class of heavy- 
laden : those who are wearied with life's drudg- 
eries. 

They live in a routine. They are employed 
in the trivialities of life. They feel that it would 
not be so mortal tiresome if they could be in 
the midst of a work of huge proportions, and 
seemingly were improving and more befitting 
an immortal spirit. 

Women are great sufferers in this department, 
especially if they think. This going through 
the rounds of housewifery, brushing, dusting, 
cleaning, looking after meals, darning stockings, 
putting on buttons, day in and day out, how 
it wears them ! They are laden with loads of 
little thing 3 ! Even if wealth put them be- 
yond these, there are so many women whose 
time is crowded with visiting and receiving 
visits, vapid ceremonials of fashionable life that 
are a real labor. You know that some of you 
come home in utter weariness, drag yourselves 
to your parlors or boudoirs and fling yourselves 
down, panting and tired more than your carriage 
horses. 

And there are men in positions which promise 
no advance, the hum-drum labor of a hidden 
place, where the work done do-day is just that 
which was done ten years ago, and will be pre- 
cisely the same to be done twenty years to come, 
if the man live so long and keep the place. 
They are weary with drudgery. 

And yet some one must do drudgery. Some 
one must sew, cook, make, mend, tend, or 
we cannot get along. All men cannot be at 
the front. There must be unknown type- 
setters and unappreciated proof-readers as well 
as writers of far-sounding songs and high-sound- 
ing orations and deep-sounding treatises. 

If the routine drudgery of life be wrought 
for ourselves it is intolerable. But if done for 
Christ it may be beautiful. This kind of labor 
may come to be the sweet undertone of life's 
grand psalms. 

There is a pastor's wife of whom such impos- 
sible things are expected. She must visit and 
receive visits, and make her own dresses and the 
clothes of the children, and perhaps some of her 
own garments and perhaps of her husband's, and 
the whole family must be kept as nice on some 
hundreds of dollars as the children of parish- 
ioners whose income is as many thousands. And 



Rest. 



U9 



her husband does not help her much, as the parish 
keeps him closely worked. And she compares 
herself with her husband, and says, " If he labor 
and is heavy laden, he is doing some good and 
gets his reward as he goes along. He is engaged 
in thoughts on loftiest themes and sees the fruit of 
his labor. My life is frittered away in trifles or 
worn with drudgery." Let such a woman stop and 
think that but for all the unseen things she does, 
things that are absolutely necessary to keep the 
domestic machinery lubricated, her husband and 
her sons could never do half asimuch for the world. 

If done for Christ, all is grand, the work of 
spade, or needle, or pen, or sceptre. Let those 
who are weary of life's low, unshining duties 
recall the lines of holy George Herbert : 

" Nothing can be so mean, 
Which when enacted for Thy sake, 

Will not grow bright and clean. 
A servant with this clause 

Makes drudgery divine ; 
Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws, 

Makes that and the action fine." 

And let it be remembered that God has given 
his leaders just such training, that He has never 
allowed a man to take a conspicuous place in 
any department of human society until that man 
has spent years in unknown, weary, wasting 
drudgery. In professional, mercantile, social, 
scientific, political, and military life He has 
trained in gloom and labor and burden-bearing 
and routine drudgery the men who were to lead 
the world. So, in the back side of the solitary 
desert, He trained Moses ; so, behind the plough 
and among the sheep and in the fishing boats, 
he reared Elisha and David and tht j Disciples. 
"He that is faithful over a few things shall be 
made ruler over many," is a principle in his 
kingdom. 

What if no eye sees us, what if no voice praises ? 
At night, when the dull, unappreciated work is 
over, we can go to Jesus and meet the glad 
recognition of his eye and lay our heads on his 
shoulder and fall asleep listening to his sweet 
murmuring applause of "Well done ! well done ! 
well done !" While we work in alleys and 
wharves, with drays and carts, in back shops over 
saw or needle or pen, or in some school of hard, 
dull children, He is waiting for us, and as we 
close the door behind us and move weary and 
heavy laden to our homes, He opens His arms 
and says, " Come to me, come and find rest." 

Third. There is the class who are weary with 
the difficulties of life. 

It seems impossible to avoid these. No 



wealth, no tact, no goodness, no amiability 
can save us. Exert what skill you will and do 
just as well as you can, and difficulties will come. 
But who can always be perfectly just and mer- 
ciful and wise and good ? If he were, there are 
those who are not. 

Have you not noticed occasionally in socitey, 
a man who seemed high-principled and mag- 
nanimous and bland and sweet-mannered, who 
nevertheless had difficulties wherever he went, 
although he was manifestly willing to sacrifice 
anything but duty to avoid difficulty ? 

Sometimes you must have noticed also this 
other marvel : difficulties springing up between 
two good men. There is a controversy. Each 
man's friends believe him to be the soul of 
honor. Both have thousands of acquaintances 
who believe them to be good Christians ; and 
yet they have a difficulty. It is a misunder- 
standing. You are misunderstood by him and 
others. He is misunderstood by you and others. 
O, I do think it is one of the hardest things in 
life to be misunderstood by a good man, when 
I know my motives to be so good, while my 
position is such that I cannot make that good 
man understand it all. 

And then, there are business difficulties, per- 
plexities in buying and selling and getting gain. 
The clash of interests is so hard, the compe- 
tition is so keen ! You cannot look after your 
neighbor's interests and your own. You must 
care for the latter. Without doing him a parti- 
cle of wrong, you gain and he loses, or he gains 
and you lose. Do you not know how hard it is to 
lose and not suspect the gainer of cheating ? And, 
who that fails has any sympathy ? And, if you 
want to make a man hate you, indorse for him 
to the amount of thousands, and let him fail, 
and do you pay it ; by-and-by you may forgive 
him, but he will never forgive you. Is not all 
this wearisome? Is not business a heavy load? 
> But heavier is the load of domestic perplexi- 
ties. That' presses so on a man's brain and 
heart. Misunderstandings among the children, 
the suspension of perfect accord between man 
and wife, disagreements between parents and 
children — I can imagine nothing more burden- 
some than to bear these through long months 
and years. 

Even where love reigns unbroken we have do- 
mestic perplexities in deciding what is right and 
best for each member of the family. How many 
a poor man is all the more perplexed because of 
his love for all his family ! How many a widow 
I is heavy laden with cares for her fatherless ! 



ISO 



Rest. 



How are we in these cases to have rest ? 
They cannot be avoided. They must somehow 
be transmuted into blessings. 

jesus knows it all. He knows our honor, our 
right-mindedness, our trials and difficulties and 
perplexities. He says, " Come unto me with 
your misunderstandings, your business difficul- 
ties, your domestic perplexities, and find rest for 
your souls. Learn of me. Do all for me. Put 
my yoke on, and then you will be able to draw 
your load." It is the lack of Christ's help which 
makes life so hard on us. "In all thy ways ac- 
knowledge Him, and He will direct thy paths." 
Let us simply go just as far as He wants us to 
go, and do just as much as He desires, and we 
shall find rest, for at the end we can cast all our 
burdens on the Lord. 

Fourth. There is the class of those who are 
weary with the fight of life. 

" There is no release from this war." We are 
on the wrong side or the right side. If the for- 
mer, our weariness is increased by the feeling 
that we have no sustaining strength except the 
fitful fever of passion, and that we must succumb 
at last. If on the right side, how long it seems 
before the final triumph is to come, — " if it ever 
do come," whispers our faithless heart. The 
right side is not always victorious, not always in 
the ascendant. It is defeated often, depressed 
often, sometimes for long years under the cloud 
and under the ban and under the heel, as Chris- 
tianity was, which, being ''the right cause," has 
several times been " the lost cause," and in some 
countries even now is. Men who fight for the 
right cheer themselves with Mr. Bryant's verses : 

" Truth crushed to earth will rise again 
The eternal years of God are hers 

but it is so tiresome to wait for the eternal years 
to vindicate the truth. 

And, then, there is the rebellion in our own 
souls to conquer, the desperate fight within, the 
conflict between our conviction of duty and our 
inclination to ease or to wrong-doing, the resolute 
work of bringing ourselves into obedience to the 
law. When a man has maintained this conflict 
for years, " fightings without and foes within," 
how weary he feels, how heavy laden with the 
armor which seems to grow heavier, how he 
longs for the quiet of scenes where no enemy 
breaks in on the night with a whoop, and makes 
the day one of perpetual wakefulness or strife ! 

O, weary brethren of the march and the battle- 
field, remind yourselves that all the good have 
had this conflict, and that all the good have been 
brought off more than conquerors. We can have 



quiet of soul only as we come to Jesus. If this 
conflict be undertaken in our own strength, or 
for our own ends, we shall be in perpetual alarm 
and under a perpetual strain, because we may 
fail at last. But if it be for Jesus, we can never 
fail. We may die, but we shall conquer. We 
shall have the repose of faith in our final vic- 
tory, and that is rest for our souls. 

Remember, dear brethren, that Jesus is the 
"captain of our salvation." He is the com- 
mander-in-chief. He has the whole responsi- 
bility of the conduct of the warfare — He plans 
the whole campaign. You and I do not have to 
determine our marches and encampments and 
engagements. We have only to follow Jesus. 
He will often lead us into the thick of the fight, 
but He will always bring us through. But when- 
ever we undertake to be captains and assume the 
load of responsibility, we put off Christ's yoke 
and put on the yoke of selfishness. We fail and 
fall under the load. 

Remember also, dear brethren, what He has 
said to ns : — £< Be of good cheer, for I have over- 
come the world." He is the certainty of rest at 
last. He will help us to overcome. 

Fifth. There is time to speak of only one other 
class of those who are weary — namely, those who 
are laboring under the burden of sin. 

As I have passed along the line of those weary 
with overwork, with drudgeries, with difficulties, 
and with the fight of life, perhaps some man 
here has been saying to himself, " All these are 
mere nothings compared with the load that is 
breaking my breast !" 

Ah ! my dear brother, I know with what you 
are so heavily laden. It is your sins; it is the 
burden which lay heavy on the back of Christian 
as he fled from the City of Destruction. The 
longer you carry it, the heavier it grows. It is 
invisible to the eyes of your friends, but it is 
such a fearful reality to you ! Sometimes you 
grow so weary of it that you cannot take a long 
breath. Sometimes it wakes you in the night, 
like a great rock pressing on you. Sometimes 
you have become dizzy and blind, staggering 
under it. If you could be rid of it, you would 
be willing to be poor, embarrassed, persecuted. 
Yes, it is the heaviest load that human souls can 
bear. To him that has that burden on his heart 
business is a weariness, thought is darkness, and 
love is an embittered sweet. You want rest. 

You can never rest with your sins. Be sure 
of that. You must be rid of them. 

Jesus looks at you struggling forward or fall- 
ing and panting. How He pities you ! " Come 
to me," He says, " and I will give you rest." O 



Rest. 



151 



if you could be sure that the Heavenly Father 
had forgiven you. O, if you could have faith in 
His love for you. O, if you could love Him. O, 
if you had hope of resting in heaven at last. 
These are the sighs and groans of your soul. 
None but Jesus can give you all these so greatly 
desired things. 

Until you come to Jesv \ there is no ground of 
hope of forgiveness, there is nothing in the 
universe to give you any reason to believe that 
God will forgive your sins. Everything out of 
Jesus seems to assert that there is never forgive- 
ness of sins. That is the reason why Jesus 
says, "Come to Me," because He knows that 
there is no other to whom a sinner can go who 
can assure him that God is just and yet the justi- 
fier of the ungodly. Jesus is God's revelation 
of that fact. There is no sign of such a thought 
in Natural Religion. 

When you come to Jesus and rest in Him you 
discover how God loves you, not because He 
made you, not with a lore which depends upon 
your goodness, but with the everlasting love of 
a Father, a love so great and wise that He would 
not if He could make your sins be less a burden 
to your souls, but would increase that burden 
that you might be driven to be rid of your sins. 

And, when you come to Him and find how 
He loves you and takes the burden from your 
soul, you will love Him. That is what you want. 
Your sins are greatly aggravated by the stony 
hardness of your hearts toward God. Jesus 
takes it all away. Your mind has the repose of 
faith, your conscience the repose of forgiveness, 
your hearts the repose of love. 

Come to Jesus, just now, just as you are, just 
as He asks you to come. You can never find 



rest elsewhere. You are a " restless wanderer 
after rest." 

Are you frightened away from Jesus because 
He speaks of His burden and His yoke ? O 
think how heavy other burdens are, how much 
heavier than His ! Think what Mammon lays 
on us, and Satan. Their yokes do not help us 
to draw the draughts of life, but are an addi- 
tional burden. The burdens Jesus puts on us 
are wings that add to our weight but help us to 
fly. 

There is no rest out of Him. All who have 
reposed on Him have found rest for their souls. 
Why will not you come ? He stands with such 
compassion in His eyes, eyes moist with pitying 
tearfulness, and sees the long and weary proces- 
sion of the world's burden-bearers staggering 
forward, heated and worn and sweating and 
panting, going from toil to trouble and from 
trouble to toil, and He stretches out His loving 
hands and says, " Come ! Come to Me ! Come 
all, all who labor, all who are heavy laden, 
come ! and I will give you rest ; you shall find 
rest to your souls ; my yoke shall heal the sores 
which the galling yokes of the World and the 
Devil have made ; Come ! Come !" 

Will you not ? 

If you will not come to Jesus, where do you 
intend to go, and to whom ? 

Or, will you bear your burdens forever ? 

Without Jesus Heaven is no rest for the 
weary. You may have youth and health and 
wealth and genius, and all the harps and crowns 
and thrones in earth and heaven, but until you 
come to Jesus you will be tossed in unrest. 
Come now, and lay your throbbing head on the 
bosom of Infinite Love. 



XXV. 

(SilMjSt'js <$uw Ux %wvtob, 

" LET NOT YOUR HEART BE TROUBLED : YE BELIEVE IN GOD, BELIEVE ALSO IN ME. IN MY 

FATHER'S HOUSE ARE MANY MANSIONS: IF IT WERE NOT SO, I WOULD HAVE TOLD YOU. 

I GO TO PREPARE A PLACE FOR YOU. AND IF I GO AND PREPARE A PLACE FOR YOU, I 

WILL COME AGAIN AND RECEIVE YOU UNTO MYSELF; THAT WHERE I AM, THERE YE MAY 
BE ALSO."— JOHN, XIV. I-4. 



I. 

The sore of the world is trouble. 

The cure of the world is faith. 

The seat of trouble is not in anything outside 
of us. It is in the passions. Work,, wakeful- 
ness, losses, bereavements, sickness, poverty, 
life's burdens, life's battles, — these are not 
troubles. They are discipline. While the 
passions are in right and healthful play all these 
things may befall a man, and yet he may be 
wholly untroubled. He may walk the lone 
places of a wilderness or thread the crowds of 
a thronged city, friendless, penniless, without 
pleasing material prospects, and yet not be 
troubled. He may sit chained and wearing life 
away in a prison, or be walking forward to the 
martyr's stake or to the scaffold of infamy, and 
yet not be troubled. On the other hand, a man 
may be lapped in luxury and crowned with 
honors and externally surrounded by all that 
can minister to his personal comfort and dignity, 
and yet be exceedingly troubled. In the latter 
case, the man's passions are irregular, disturbed, 
and tossed about, as the sea is when a tempest 
is on it ; in the other case, the man's passions 
are quiet, steady, serene, like a lake in the em- 
brace of a dense forest in the fastnesses of a 
mountain. 

We are accustomed to the distinction of intel- 
lections and emotions and volitions, or, as we 
are more accustomed to call them, our thoughts 
or belief, our feelings or passions, and our will. 

But clear and certain as the distinction be- 
tween these is, and well as we have learned that 
distinction, and that the natural order of oper- 
ation is that our volitions are caused by our 
emotions and our emotions by our intellections, 
so that if you wish to induce a man to do any- 
thing you must make him feel like doing it, and 
to make him feel so you must make him see 
that it is in some way best for him to do it ; 
yet we are all conscious that there are re- 



actions among the several departments of our 
inner constitution. Thus our wills react as our 
passions, and our passions on our belief. 

The cause of all our trouble is the want of 
harmony between our wills and God's will. 

Let them accord, let our perception of what 
is good for us agree with the thoughts of our 
Heavenly Father on that subject, and let our 
will be in perfect accord with His will, and then 
nothing in heaven or earth or hell can trouble 
us. But when we beat ourselves against the 
barriers erected by omnipotence for our safety 
and good, then there is trouble. Our passions 
heave. We are then like the wicked, whose heart 
the prophet likens to the troubled sea when it 
cannot rest, casting up mire and filth. 

This conflict between our wills and the will of 
God is caused by want of faith in God. 

Perfect trust brings perfect accord and con- 
cord. The absence of trust produces discord. 

Our trouble arises from our want of faith in 
the rightfulness and paramount authority of 
God's law. 

Men would not fight against God's law of 
morals or of providence if they could perceive 
that the law is perfectly good and right, both in 
the sense of promoting man's interest and in 
the sense of promoting man's happiness. Men 
have an impression that the law of God is a 
kind of rack or Procustes's bed, cutting long 
men short and stretching short men long for 
arbitrary reasons, and not that every regulation 
of the kingdom of God is for man's sake and 
the sake of other creatures, and not for God's 
sake, who does not need them. 

And it is just because men do not see and be- 
lieve that the law of God is good that they do 
not believe it is paramount. It must give way 
sometimes, they think. If they saw that it is 
always right and good they would see that 
everything must give way to it; that if it 
were slackened or intermitted for any moment 
or for any case, there would be badness in 



Christ's Cure for Trouble. 



153 



the heart of God or weakness in the arm of 
God. 

The origin of the trouble of every heart from 
the beginning is to be found in this failure of 
faith in God. It was so with Adam and Eve. 
There was no trouble while they trusted their 
Heavenly Father. Their trouble was not pro- 
duced by the fruit of the forbidden tree whose 
taste brought death into our world, as Milton 
sung. It was doubting God. It was the belief 
that God's regulation originated in some selfish 
design of His, and that a man would better do 
what was pleasing to himself, and run the risk 
of a law whose foundation was in selfishness. 
You cannot seduce a man into wrong doing 
until you shake his faith in God. 

It is this fundamental principle of which Jesus 
seems to have thought when he addressed these 
words of comfort to His disciples. He had told 
them some things that had troubled them. He 
had said that He was going to leave them, that 
their separation was to be a disruption caused 
by something awful which was about to befall 
Him. He had informed them that this dire 
catastrophe, whatever it was, for they did not 
understand, was to be aggravated by displays of 
ingratitude and treachery upon the part of some 
of that little band who surrounded Him. Judas 
was to betray, and Peter was to deny Him. It 
threw them into a tumult of passionate trouble. 
Everything seemed about to be lost at once. 
How tenderly Jesus recalled them ! "Let not 
your heart be troubled. Believe in God. Be- 
lieve also in Me." So it is in the original. 
The word in both members of the sentence is 
in the same tense. 

This seems to me to mean two things. 

1. It means that belief in God is necessary to 
belief in Jesus. Jesus, then, is something more 
than a mere extraordinary specimen of human- 
ity. A man may be an atheist, and yet believe 
in the grandest specimen of mere humanity that 
ever existed, because that most glorious man is 
only man and nothing more. But a man must 
believe in God before he can believe in Jesus, 
because while Jesus is a man, He is, also, very 
much more than a man. Not until one has reached 
the platform of theism, can he believe in Jesus. 

2. But simple belief in God has never cured 
trouble. It might have kept all trouble from 
the human heart if originally persevered in. 
But after sin had come into the world and been 
transmitted from sire to son, even as physical 
and intellectual traits are trans^riittcci, there 
seems to be something else necessary to allay 
the trouble of the heart. 



And for this we can appeal to every man's 
experience. Does a mere belief in God, a Su- 
preme Maker and Governor of the universe, 
cure the trouble of your heart ? On the contrary, 
do you not often feel that you would be in better 
case, freer and happier far, if God would throw 
His laws away, or still better, cease to exist ? 
Does not God seem to you really an embarrass- 
ment ? 

The fact is, that until we came to distinguish 
between creatures and children, and to believe 
that we are not simply the products of God's 
skill and power, but the real offspring of His 
heart, our belief in God can produce no agree- 
able feelings toward Him. 

Suppose, for instance, that some marvellous 
machine should suddenly be endowed with the 
faculties of thought, feeling, and volition, and 
could then know the man whose fertile brain 
conceived the idea of its existence, and whose 
cunning hand realized that idea. How would it 
regard him? Certainly with no other emotions 
than those of admiration. It could have no love. 
And if it did not want to work, and the man who 
was its maker and owner desired it to work, 
the feelings of the machine would be troubled. 
It would be in conflict with a power that could 
control it, when it did not want to be controlled. 

Now, such is the case of any human being 
who has no other thought of God than that He 
is the Maker of men. 

We must have some distinct and indubitable 
evidence of His loving us, and of His loving us 
with a love that is as little likely to cease on any 
account as His love for Himself, which, in real- 
ity, is the love a father has for his child. Of 
such love Jesus is the demonstration. He was 
going into a process of suffering and darkness 
which should seem to extinguish Him ; but He 
should do all for them that was necessary to 
bring them unto God. They must believe in 
Him. To such as believed, He should very 
shortly give, in His resurrection and ascension, 
proofs of His oneness with .God, and proofs of 
His love for them in such manner as should 
make them, and all who believed through their 
word, love God forever thereafter. 

When men tell us that the immediate friends 
and disciples of Jesus did not believe in His 
divinity before His death, the statement amounts 
to nothing as proof against that divinity. Of 
course they did not. On the supposition that 
Jesus was "very God," He would not have ex- 
pected this. Those men were not credulous. 
They were plain minds, rather incredulous than 
otherwise. The demonstration was not com- 



154 



Christ's Cure for Trouble. 



plete. There was more crowded into the three 
days which followed the utterance of the words 
of this text, than into the three and thirty pre- 
ceding years of the life of Jesus; nay, more 
than into all the ages of the world before. He 
was to die, the just for the unjust, to bring us 
unto God. He was to become the propitiation 
for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the 
sins of the whole world. He was to " bear our 
sins in His own body on the tree." He was to 
give Himself a ransom for all. 

He was thus to show the character of God in 
such phases as should have a powerful effect on 
our moral character. The belief in the abstract 
God does not help our trouble. Belief in Jesus 
is belief in God manifest in the flesh, God in- 
carnating Himself for nothing selfish, but by 
reason of the promptings of love for us, putting 
Himself thus into most complete and perpetual 
sympathy with us, making us feel that if any 
disasters should happen to us, He would be the 
person who most should feel it. This breaks 
down the opposition of our hearts to God. 
This identifies our interests and the interests of 
God. We are not longer at variance. We are 
at one. 

From another point of view, belief in Jesus 
has the effect of abating our trouble. 

He declares Himself the governor of the 
world. All power is in His hands. The Prov- 
idence of creation is in the hands of a man, 
my brother, of my humanity yet good as I can 
imagine the immaculate God to be, just and 
pure and true and tender. When I look up 
toward the throne of the universe, there is no 
longer an emptiness there, nor is it any longer 
covered with a vague and unapproachable 
glory. The dearest friend I have in all the 
universe is, sitting there. He is the dearest 
friend of every other man. It is He who took 
babes in His arms, and stilled storms, and fed 
the hungry, and opened the eyes of the blind, 
and cleansed the leper, and wept beside the 
grave of His poor friend, and cheered the 
hearts of widows and orphans, and spoke with 
exquisite tenderness to the adulteress, and 
breathed in death divine forgiveness to His mur- 
derers. He rules all things. He incarnated 
Himself and died to save me. He will manage 
the universe for the purposes of the atonement, 
because His heart is set on that work. Why 
should my heart be troubled ? Is not the king 
of eternity my immortal friend ? 

In walking the ways of the world, in fighting 
the battles of the right, I need unerring leader- 
ship. The abstract ideal God is too far removed 



from all my human frailties to have sympathy 
with me. His words sound like the edicts of an 
imperial lawgiver. My heart craves one whose 
weary feet have trod the dusty road which mine 
must tread, whose tired shoulders have stooped 
beneath the very burdens which bow mine, and 
who has been in the heat of the battle whose 
brunt my courage must bear. Jesus says, "Be- 
lieve in me. I have overcome the world." 

How can I be troubled more? He is the 
propitiation for my sins, He is the governor of 
the universe, He is my leader through all 
places narrow and dark and frightful, or large 
and wealthy and seductive. If I believe this 
and perpetually yield my heart and all its pas- 
sions to this faith, how my troubles disappear ! 
Without Jesus, my heart is like the Galilean 
lake, night-bound and storm-lashed. The dark 
tempest is heavy on me. My inner man is the 
image of all confusion and wretchedness and 
anarchy; but when He comes walking cn the 
waters, there is splendor on the sea. When He 
says, "Peace, be still !" there is a great calm. 

Our cure for trouble is our faith in God, even 
in Jesus. 

Mark, my beloved brethren, that no accept- 
ance of some special dogma is insisted upon. 
And in this the religion of Jesus is singular and 
singularly suited to our humanity. It is belief 
in a person, a living man. Men may endure the 
drill of a party or a sect, but it is a hardness 
after all. It is a man, not a church, a party, a 
cause, that can hold men together. A man 
that has spiritual or mental power, a man that 
has ideas, draws people about him, and if he die, 
his idea, his personality, will keep them together 
for a longer or shorter time, until party drill can 
hold them. A man's greatness depends on the 
intensity of his personality. After his death his 
name is a power because it is representative of 
his special personality. 

Jesus is the most intensely personal being 
known among men. He founded no church. 
He enacted no code. He left no organization. 
He simply lived, lived intensely, a life of intense 
thought and emotion and volition and action. 
He left that life to live on. And it does live on. 
No man on earth this day is as much alive 
among us as Jesus. It is the person of Jesus 
we love, not any particular word He spoke, not 
any particular act He performed. " Believe in 
Me" said Jesus, not in this or that theological 
proposition. 

It is because His religion is founded on His 
personality and our trust in Him personally that 
the simplest souls may be as religious as the 



Christ's Cure 



most learned, the little child quite as well as the 
old and cultivated parent. Indeed, the little one 
can illustrate his religion from that very relation- 
ship of parent and child. He cannot analyze 
the character of his father, but he believes in 
him. He cannot tell you why, but he believes 
in him. It is not in goodness and truth and 
strength that the child believes, or if he does 
he does not know it ; but he does know that 
man as his father, and he believes in him. 

Such is the power of personality that a climax 
of axompliment from a man to his friend is, "I 
believe in him." 

And this explains the existence of fidelity in 
men who have such feeble intellectual powers. 

And this explains how it is that a man may 
hold what you and I think are grave errors in 
theoretic and dogmatic theology and yet be a 
good man, as we are bound to admit. He may 
make mistakes as to the character of God and 
of Christ, and yet be good because he believes 
in Him. 

And this explains the profound interest taken 
in this nineteenth century after His death in all 
discussions of the personality and character of 
Jesus, so that every new biography of Jesus, 
every new essay on that person, has more read- 
ers than the biography of any man who has 
died in the current century. The personality 
of Jesus is immense, is intense, is immortal. 
What he meant by "Me," was not the idol of 
egoism, it was a conscious divine personality, 
which is the shadow of a great rock in a weary 
land, a fortress and strong tower, a secure 
place and a refuge for troubled souls. 

Belief in that sense was the present specific 
for trouble prescribed by Jesus. 

II. 

Then from Himself as from a centre he sweeps 
the universe of space and duration, and folds it 
all down upon every humble and trusting heart 
as a measureless benediction. " In my Father's 
house are many mansions." How this takes the 
vagueness out of our ideas of God ! He is a 
father ! He has a domestic establishment ! It is 
vast ! It embraces mansions ! There are many 
mansions ! It gives such space for the workings 
of the providence of God and for the develop- 
ment of the nature and the plans of a human 
soul. And it has such a tone of security. 

Modern astronomy has revealed such breadth 
of physical creation to us that the im- 
agination staggers under the load of worlds 
which science heaps upon it. But how narrow 
must have been the conceptions of the universe 



for Trouble. 155 



by the minds of the men who composed the 
company to whom Jesus originally addressed 
these words. The Syrian sky is amazingly clear ; 
but how few companies of all the battalions 
of the stars march to the front even through 
that clarified atmosphere. And how our re- 
cently constructed scientific instruments enlarge 
and deepen this saying of Jesus ! 

It is to be noticed that the progress of human 
thought is toward supreme or ultimate general- 
ization. Our intellects gravitate toward a com- 
mon centre. Already, knowing only the out- 
skirts of the universe, men are beginning to 
strive to ascertain the centre of all this vast 
series and congeries of revolving worlds. There, 
in that centre, we seem to feel must be the chief 
place of God, or at least the spot from which 
the great beats of the Infinite Heart send throbs 
of life and power to the utmost edge of created 
things. 

There is an unhealthy fear of God which is 
not humble reverence. Men dread to think of 
Him. We put Him far from us. We dare 
discuss only scholastic and metaphysical views 
of Him. In our catechisms we put Him just as 
far away from our children as we can. We de- 
fine Him by a circle which we contract to its 
centre, and that centre is a point "without body 
or parts or passions." 

Jesus does no such fhing. God is a person, 
a spirit, therefore a substance and an existence. 
He has a body that is not material, and passions 
that are not sinful. He has a house and a 
household. We are near Him, and He is near 
us. He makes homes for his children all over 
the universe. Why, then, should I be troubled 
that I am to die ? I have had a home for a 
half century in this one of my Father's mansions. 
My removal will be like the progress of a prince 
from castle to castle of his father's dominions. 
In each I shall find new work and new delights. 

One of the phases of man's unbelief is that he 
does not seem to have space and time enough 
allotted to him to carry forward to completion 
the grand projects of his intellect and to realize 
the grand ideals of the imagination. Some of 
you apparently could work improvingly for a 
thousand years, growing stronger and richer 
and better. But you will die at eighty. And it 
troubles you. But if you will believe in Jesus, 
this trouble shall disappear. In the boundless 
field of the universe, in the perpetual cycles of 
eternity, you shall find space enough and time 
enough to do all that you desire now or may 
desire hereafter. The better a man becomes 
the larger his desires and plans and purposes. 



156 



Christ's Cure for Trouble. 



He becomes inflamed with what might be called 
a holy discontent. If that is your case, be 
patient. In your Father's house are many 
mansions. 

Then the resistance of our wills to God's 
makes us so resentful of this circumscription of 
our power to the ordinary limit of human life 
that we lose our earnestness, we become lay 
figures or masqueraders in human society. What 
we cannot do in this mortal life we do not 
choose to do at all, and we take up the con- 
temptible shams of a frivolous existence. Is 
that the state of your feelings to-day ? 

" Brave quiet is the thing for thee, 
Chiding thy scrupulous fears ! 
Learn to be real from the thought 
Of the Eternal Years." 

Another thing Jesus utters to be a heart-cure 
for those who believe in Him: " If it were not 
so, I would have told you /" 

I do think, dear brethren, that this is one of 
the most profoundly exquisite things in all the 
sayings of our Lord. He will not only correct 
our thoughts of God, but He will show us that 
He has a most tender regard even for our hopes 
and aspirations. He will not let us have a false 
hope. 

He knew how often those rugged men around 
him, as they toiled all night on the Galilean 
lake and caught nothing, or were tossed about 
with storms, had longed for a larger sphere, a 
wider outlook, when their souls should be no 
longer cabined and confined. Those men had 
loved Him, and in some blind way, sometimes 
better and sometimes worse, had believed in 
Him. They were His friends. He knew that 
they had aspirations higher than the Temple 
that shone all day on Zion's holy hill, and wider 
than the spangled tent that spread all night 
above the Holy Land. He would not go away 
and leave them cherishing a fond delusion. He 
might not tell them all that is in reserve for 
faithful souls ; but He would tell them if the 
things they hoped were the unsubstantial 
shadows of an idle dream. In this there ought 
to be a happy lesson for every earnest heart. 

There is a gloomy infidelity in us which says 
of happiest things that they are "too good to 
be true." What a troubled shadow unbelief 
throws on what is most beautiful ! your proposi- 
tion is, that the desirableness of anything is 
prima facie evidence that that thing is not for 
human beings; and this is false. Whatever we 
desire we shall probably have. Unless that de- 
sire can be shown to be bad, its existence in my 



heart is a prophecy of its own fulfillment. If 
you have any hope for eternity, and Jesus 
Christ has not contradicted it, you may reasona- 
bly indulge it. See what a field that flings open 
to us. I may confidently rely upon having 
whatever employment or enjoyment I desire 
and expect for eternity, if it be not inconsistent 
with my faith in Him, and if He has not ex- 
pressly told me that that hope is fruitless. Is 
it good enough to be true? That is the ques- 
tion. It never can be too good to be true, since 
Jesus has said, " If it were not so, I would have 
told you !" O blessed regard for even the 
dreams of those who believe in Him ! 

That is comforting but grandly vague. He 
goes further, with something quite explicit, as 
an antidote to our trouble. He tells us that 
He departs in order to "go to prepare a place 
for us." 

This meets another phase of trouble. Our 
wills conflict with the will of God because we 
never feel at home on earth, " fixed," as we say, 
totally suited in our surroundings. 

Were you ever? I never was. 

Think how much is necessary for perfect com- 
fort. 

There must be a suitable physique, a body 
not too large nor too small, manageable, pliable, 
agreeable in all the particulars of size, beauty, 
and health, for our body is one of our homes. 

Then there must be perfectly fitting clothes ; 
a collar too tight, a boot too small, any garment 
in error of excess or defect, breaks one's com- 
fort incalculably ; for our clothes are one of our 
homes. 

Then our house must be in everything com- 
plete; nay, it must be an elastic house, expand 
ing or shrinking to our wants at different times, 
for we are so variable ; and our houses are one 
of our homes. I do not know any man who 
would not make some alteration in his house if 
he could do it instantly, and without expense. I 
do not know any house that would entirely suit 
me. I have tried the question on myself in 
Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace, in the 
Tuileries and the Trianon, in the Sans Souci 
and the Schonberg, in Chatsworth and the Villa 
Borghese, and while all are noble and beautiful 
residences, I should require a thousand improve- 
ments in any one of them to make it a place to 
fit me. And I suppose we are all alike in that 
particular. 

When the house suits, perhaps the situation 
is disagreeable, or uninteresting. When the 
residence is complete, there is the absence of 



Christ's Cure for Trouble. 



157 



the beloved, or the presence of an unpleasant 
neighborhood. 

It is not an unamiable discontentedness in 
human nature which makes us dissatisfied or 
unsatisfied : it is the inability of this present 
world, with all its resources, to fill the soul ; and 
this argues the soul's greatness. 

Jesus says, " / go to prepare a place for you." 
He knows what is in us. He knows what we 
need about us. He is putting all His resources to 
the work of fitting up for us mansions in the 
spiritual world. Our place will be complete. 
How that abates our troubles ! Here we have 
no continuing city. This last week, New York 
was upset with moving households. Thousands 
of families have changed residences since last 
Sunday. O the perplexity, anxiety, and loss of 
these removals ! Many have gone from good to 
bad, others from bad to worse, and some to bet- 
ter. But who now is perfectly suited ? And 
what is to become of us next May ? And where 
is to be the shelter of our old age? 

O my brethren, a more important question is, 
where and what is to be our residence in eternity ? 
If we believe in Jesus that trouble ceases. While 
we are crowded in our close rooms and uncom- 
fortable quarters, cramped, embarrassed, and 
often disheartened, Jesus is preparing a place for 
us in the spiritual world. We do not hear 
the noise of masons, carpenters, and upholster- 
ers ; but the work is going steadily forward, 
and He who has it in hand will make it quite 
complete. We shall be able to make no sugges- 
tions. There shall be nothing wanting in the 
place when Jesus pronounces it ready. 

''Ready?" Then when it is ready we must 
go to it. There is to be a removal. We shall 
quit these old habitations. We shall forsake 
these unpleasant surroundings. But still there 
is something to try one, in any change of resi- 
dence. In this case it is a vast change. It is 
natural that we should shrink back and be afraid 
to die. That is our instinct. And when we know 
that we must die, our wills fight against the 
will of God, clinging to this present life, while 
the Lord says to us, " Fight the good fight of 
faith: lay hold on eternal life." We do grasp 
eternal life when we believe in Jesus. He says, 
" I will come for you and take you." 

Not long before, he had painted the picture of 
the Rich Man and Lazarus, He had described 
the joylessness of the sore and helpless beggar, 
who hungered and fainted and died at the rich 
man's doors. The dogs were licking his sores 
unconscious of the presence of angels, who drew 
the spirit of Lazarus gently out of his ulcerated 



carcass, that poor house of flesh, and gently, with 
celestial hands, lifted him far above the stone 
door-step, far above the kennels of the dogs and 
the palaces of the rich men ; up, far above moon 
and sun and stars ; out, softly and swiftly to the 
Father's house, to the bosom of Abraham. 

Did you ever fancy the feelings of Lazarus as 
this process of transportation was going for- 
ward ? I have. I have lain flat on my back 
and shut my eyes and dreamily felt the moist 
and velvety tongues of the dogs licking sores 
on my legs and arms, while my spirit glided 
out of my flesh into arms white as lilies, smooth 
as satin, and loving as my mother's ; and they 
held me and loved me and carried me with a 
wondrous rush that did not daze me but soothed 
me, through a medium that brushed all my 
tears and cares and sorrows away, until they 
laid me on the lap of Peace ; and then, when I 
slowly opened my eyes, I saw the Father of the 
Faithful and found myself in the House of 
many mansions. 

Jesus promises something even better than 
that. When we come to die, brethren, He will 
be present. " I will come," He says. Our faint 
call for father or mother or wife or child may fall 
on the roar of the winds through the forest or on 
the fell tempest striding the sea, and no earthly 
friend may know that we are dying. But Jesus 
will be there. On the raft, in the cave, at the 
bed in the pest-house, there He will be. Or if 
surrounded by domestic comforts Jesus will be 
there. Our beloved kinsfolks must give us up ; 
but Jesus says, "I will receive you." As our 
nerveless hands shall drop out of the clasp of 
human love, Jesus will grasp them, and receive 
unto Himself what earth surrenders. 

Now see how He strengthens our faith, and 
warms our love by what He so exquisitely adds, 
"Unto Myself !" What celestial sweetness ! And, 
O marvel of all lovingness, He says what makes 
it seem a favor to Himself to be permitted to do us 
this supreme kindness, what takes all humiliation 
from the boundless favor,He says, with profoundest 
tenderness, " That where I am, there ye may be 
also." No mother ever fondled her winsome 
babe with a tenderness surpassing that. No 
bridegroom ever caressed his bride with a wor- 
shipful tenderness surpassing that. What does 
it mean, my brethren? It is the acknowledg- 
ment of Jesus that to Him heaven is incomplete 
without us. And if we believe in Him, and love 
Him, surely earth and heaven are nothing with- 
out Him. "That where I am, there thou mayst 
be also," is the adoring desire of every true heart 
toward Jesus. 



158 



Christ's Cure for Trouble. 



This, then, is the cure of the sore of the world, 
faith in God, even in Jesus, a faith which is 
created by His love for us and is sustained by 
His promises to us, promises which embrace all 
that is needful for a life that is to be perpetual. 

O that His love might have complete con- 
quest over us to-day. O that the trouble of our 
hearts might be ended by the simple submission 
to His will to-day. Brethren, God does love us. 
It is not a dry, hard saying. His is not a vague, 
abstract love. It is real. It is personal. It 
quivered on the lips of Jesus. It trembled in the 



tear of Jesus. It beat in the heart of Jesus. 
Here are the symbols of it in the Holy Eucharist 
this day, in the broken body and the shed blood 
of love's divinest sacrifice. See it ! Feel it ! 
Hear Him saying to you this day, " Let not your 
heart be troubled. Believe in God : believe also 
in me. In my Father's house there are many 
mansions : if it were not so, I would have told 
you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if 
I go and prepare a place for you, I will come 
again and receive you unto myself; that where 
I am, there ye may be also." 



XXVI. 

passing. 

" HOW LONG WILL YE LOVE VANITY, AND SEEK AFTER LEASING ?" — PSALM IV. 2, 



Next to his thought of God, man's highest 
idea is truth. 

And the idea of God would not be valuable if 
it were not the representative of what is true. 

Truth is the only reality. God is truth. God 
is real. 

Truth is the one regal thi.g in all the universe. 
It is monarchic, ruling alone and without help. 

Truth is the conqueror. It finally puts all 
things under its feet. It cannot be kept down. 
It may be hidden or crushed for a season, but it 
cannot be totally suppressed. T t conquers at 
last. 

Truth is immortal. It cannot be destroyed. 
All falsities do pass away. They have the ele- 
ments of self-destruction. Truth has the ele- 
ments of self-preservation. There could not be 
the false without the true, but the true can be 
without the false. The truth has a perpetual in- 
crease of strength. The false may be strong 
spasmodically, but it is the strength of madness, 
which endures only through the fit. 

Naturally, men love the truth. 

This is seen (i) in the fact that children repre- 
sent their thoughts and impressions just as they 
are, as nearly as their powers enable them, until 
they bring themselves to believe, or are brought 
by the example or precept of others to believe, 
that there may be a good reason for telling a lie. 

It is seen (2) in the resentment all men feel 
when they discover that they are deceived. 
When a man has been openly injured by a brave 
man who does *~>t conceal his design or his 
weapon, he resents the attack and the injury 
because his self-love has been wounded. But in 
addition to that feeling, he has a sense of humil- 
iation when he has been deceived as well as in- 
jured. It is an insult to his understanding as 
well as an attack on his interests. One can ap- 
preciate truth even in one's enemy. One cannot 
fail of contempt for falsehood even if it should 
occur in one's darling. 

It is seen (3) in the fact that men do not em- 
brace a lie as a lie, but rather persuade them- 
selves, or allow themselves to be persuaded, that 
♦he falsehood is the truth. So, a sophist does 



not employ himself in persuading men to receive 
what the sophist tell them is false, but he uses 
all his arts to persuade them that this falsehood 
is the truth, which, in fact, he himself ordinarily 
believes, having learned to "make the worse 
appear the better reason." 

To account for the prevalence of false systems 
of philosophy and religion, we need not have 
recourse to the theory that men naturally prefer 
a falsehood to the truth. A man may come to 
love a lie rather than the truth, but it is not be- 
cause of the falsity that is in the lie, but because 
of something else which seems charming and for 
which he takes the lie, notwithstanding the fal- 
sity that is in it. There maybe such plausibility 
in the argument on which it is founded, or such 
beauty in the manner in which it is presented, 
that a man may embrace it for the plausibility 
and for the beauty, not for the falsity : as a de- 
formed woman might appear in such drapery as 
to charm one, who would thus fall in love with 
an ideal and not with the real woman. 

But much more is it because of men's mental 
laziness that false religions and philosophies pre- 
vail. As Thucydides said, so many centuries ago, 
which is quite as true in our times as in his, 
" The search for truth is so irksome to the gen- 
erality of mankind that they would rather receive 
their truths ready-made." So when a system 
has been once started, men receive it as an in- 
tellectual heirloom. It is something. To give it 
up is to have nothing. They must hold on to 
it until they can satisfy themselves that another 
is better. But to do this requires great labor. 
They have neither the time nor the inclination 
for this. 

And the false theory was originally adopted on 
insufficient grounds, because it involved so much 
labor to arrive at the truth. It was maintained 
because men naturally justify themselves the 
best they can for their belief as well as their be- 
havior. Men come to think that if any opinion 
has been held for ages it must be true, or at 
least harmless, else the generations preceding 
would have somehow discovered the wrong. 

All the while there is belief that there is truth 



160 



Leasing. 



in it. Men do not say, " I know this is a lie, but 
I believe it to be true." It is not fair to argue 
with men as if they assumed such untenable 
ground as that. 

Now I come to you to-day with the Psalmist's 
expostulation, "Oye sons of men, .... how 
long will ye love vanity, and seek after leasing?" 

I bring it to you because I believe that many 
of you used to have that question pressed very 
closely in on your consciences. But I do not 
assume that you love "leasing," or lying, for 
leasing's sake. To insult you would be a poor 
preparation for an honest effort to do you good. 
If you are wrong, I must take it for granted that 
you are deceived, and that in reality you would 
prefer to be set right. If I did not believe this 
of you, why should I waste time in striving to 
" convert" you " from the errors of your ways ?" 
If you really desire to take the wrong road and 
be lead away from home and be lost, why should 
I stand and call to you and tell you that you are 
wrong ? 

My appeal is a presumption that you desire to 
be right and to do right. You "love vanity." 
That is presumed in the expostulation. But 
what does that mean ? That you know certain 
things to be utterly worthless and empty, and 
that that discovery has made you fall in love with 
those things? By no means ! That could not 
be. The discovery would have precisely the op- 
posite effect. The words mean that there are 
things which are empty, worthless, vain, and 
that your hearts are set on these things : you 
love them : and you love them just because you 
have not yet discovered their utter worthlessness. 
The words are an exclamation of surprise that so 
long you should have befooled yourselves, or 
been befooled by the notion that in these vain 
things there was something worth having, some- 
thing worth loving. How long shall that delu- 
sion hold you ? 

And so of the other words, " How long will ye 
seek after leasing?" They cannot mean that 
you are on the hunt for lies, that you are inquir- 
ing who will show you a falsehood that you may 
believe it. That would argue insanity, and why 
should we expostulate with those who are crazy ? 
No : the words mean that there are falsehoods 
in the world, and that you have seized a false- 
hood; but still, under the influence of that love 
for the truth which God originally implanted in 
the constitution of man, you are striving to make 
the falsehood truth, you are striving to realize, 
that is, to make real what is not real ; and then 
you have long been wasting your strength in 
this undertaking, which is idle and will come to 



nothing; and that you present the appearance 
of being about to lose your whole life in this 
fruitless endeavor. Why should you ? What 
gain or glory is there in such a course ? 

Sometimes it is only necessary to set a man's 
wrong thinking or wrong doing clearly before 
his eyes to turn him away from both. In that 
hope I address you to-day. Out of the mist 
which may be hanging over your opinions and 
modes of thought I desire to bring a few things 
and set them before you, so that you may be led 
to abandon these false ways. 

I. Let me solicit your attention, first of all, 
to the most solemn subject of human thought — 
God. If there be a God, our relations to Him 
must necessarily be such as to render it most im- 
portant that we shall have correct thoughts of 
Him. If our opinions of Him be wrong, they 
will vitiate every fount of thought and feeling, 
and set us wrong toward all the universe. 
^ You do believe that there is a God: that is 
assumed. Indeed it is to be presumed from the 
appeal, which goes on the supposition that your 
thoughts of God are false. You see that I say 
" Him" and not " It," for you are not idolaters 
and you are not pantheists. Yo.i believe that 
there is a personal God. You may do that and 
have most erroneous views of God. The fact is, 
that believing that there is a God, you may leave 
the real, true, personal God, turning wholly 
aside from Him, and you may have a fantasy, 
an ideal God, which has no more existence than 
the Jupiter or Mercury of classic mythology, and 
you may spend your life in striving to make that 
thing of leasing, that very vanity, a reality to 
yourself, the God of your life and your soul. 
You never will succeed in that, but it may waste 
your life, and therefore we expostulate with you. 
Why will you "seek after" this form of "leas- 
ing?" 

To bring this home to you, if I can, let me 
present two classes of opinions of God, which are 
utterly vain and false, but which men are striv- 
ing daily to make real, and I will state them in 
what appears to me to be the historical order 
of their development. 

(i) There is, first, that figment of the imagina- 
tion which represents an almighty tyrant of 
boundless resources and exhaustless malignity 
or hard selfishness, who might have made the 
human race without sin and without sorrow, but 
who did not ; who might now govern the world 
on some principle of mercy and some plan of in- 
dulgence, but does not ; who is the ideal of heart" 
less, relentless, inexorable orderliness, cutting a 
human heart in twain to square things to his 



Leasing. 



161 



rigid rules, and shaving down the race as with 
a scythe that his lawn may be regular, although 
every blade that is cut is a sensitive soul suffer- 
ing exquisite torture in the operation: a god 
who receives no result from this fearful process 
beyond the malign satisfaction of having his 
own way. 

Let your conscience speak to you to-day. Let 
it answer whether you have not had such a god 
before your eyes as the God of the Universe. 
Let it answer another question : Have you not 
loved to have such a god ? It may seem shock- 
ing, but you know it is so. This idea is a 
"vanity," but you "love" it; this theory is 
mere " leasing," but you " seek after" it ! The 
reason is that you feel therein some justification 
for your sins against the real and true God. 
For, if He were it, if He were the thing you are 
striving to make real, to be your God, then 
perhaps you would be justified in spending all 
your powers through all your existence in fight- 
ing Him. It would be the only way in which 
you could be good, for goodness is active opposi- 
tion to evil. 

But why should you strive to make any god? 
And if you will persist in making a god, why 
make him a hideous nightmare ? Why make 
him worse than men whom you believe he has 
made ? If he be God, he must have made man, 
and man is better than that THING you set up 
on the throne of the universe, not to serve and 
love, but to oppose and resist. 

Why seek after leasing? You would better 
be an atheist than do this. You would be 
shocked to be called "an atheist;" but consi- 
der; would you not rather have a man deny 
that such a person as yourself is in existence 
than to have him represent you as a monster of 
all horrible wickedness ? But see what you are 
doing. You are " changing the glory of the 
incorruptible God into an image made" worse 
than that "of corruptible man." How long 
will you love this vanity and seek after this 
leasing ? 

(2) There is another vain thought of God. 
It is the fancy of a Being whose passions are 
irregular, like those of human beings ; who has 
all power, but is quite uncertain in the exercise 
of it ; who might keep the good from all forms 
of suffering, but does not ; and who, quite as 
irregularly, sometimes lets great disasters fall on 
the bad, and sometimes lavishes blessings on 
them ; vindictive often, indulgent often, uncer- 
tain always ; promulgating a moral law for 
general purposes, but not exacting strict and 
invariable obedience ; the head of a large family 



who are unable to know all his moods and who 
must take the risks. 

There is a modification of this view. Some 
men's god is " so good" that he does not hate 
badness, and does not particularly love good- 
ness ; an easy, passionless kind of God, who lets 
things take their way as best they may, having 
done about all he cares to do for the world in 
creating it, and who has not the energy to ad- 
minister a system of moral government, and see 
to the execution of moral laws; a god from 
whom not much is to be hoped or feared. 

How utterly vain and false are these ideas ! 
And yet men, — why say " men," when I mean 
" you ?"— you are trying to make real to your- 
self just such a lie. You have been at it for 
years. Now, what good can come of it ? or, of 
any other attempt to bring yourself to believe 
that any nothing is a something or any lie is a 
truth ? God is or He is not. If He is not, 
openly release yourself from all the bonds of 
belief. If He is, it is plain duty and interest to 
discover what He is really. A vanity cannot 
displace a reality. Mistakes which we may 
make concerning God will not annihilate God, 
will not change His real character. He is what 
He is. He cannot be anything else. We can- 
not make Him anything else. Why should we 
try ? The real God must not only be as good 
as possible, but therefore, better than we can 
imagine, so that we cannot improve on the 
character of God even in our highest ideals. 
. In practical affairs we would better know the 
exact truth. There can be no affairs more prac- 
tical than the intercourse between our God and 
our souls. Why should we not seek to know 
the best and the worst of "Him with whom we 
have to do." What is the exact truth? 

II. Let me now draw your thoughts to another 
form of seeking after leasing : the attempt to 
make a false hope real. 

We "are saved by hope." It is our salvation 
from despair ; and despair is the drowning of our 
active faculties in a slough of dark and strangling 
horrors. But in order to be saving, our hope 
must have foundation in "what is real," how- 
ever invisible and intangible, — in what is possible, 
however far away. 

A man's hope is not simply what he expects. 
He may be almost certain of the arrival of some- 
thing, and yet dread it. 

A man's hope is not simply what he desires. 
He may long for the possession of something 
with the absolute certainty that he will never 
obtain it. 

He must desire what he expects, and he must 



162 



Leasing. 



expect what he desires. These are the true ele- 
ments of human hope. His desires are the pro- 
ducts of man's nature : his expectations depend 
upon something outside of himself. 

A reasonable expectation cannot be, if the 
thing desired have no real existence, or be im- 
practicable. The thing desired may have a real 
existence, and yet the relations of a man to that 
thing may be such that the probabilities are 
almost tantamount to a certainty that he can 
never succeed in the achievement or never obtain 
the possession. 

Let us illustrate, for the benefit of the children 
in the gallery. 

You have heard the song of the Peri, who 

" At the gate 
Of Eden, stood disconsolate." 

Now, suppose some man should desire to have 
this airy fairy beauty for his little wife : there 
could be no hope, because there never was 
such a thing as a Peri. 

But there is such a thing as the crown of the 
British empire. Suppose one of these little 
American boys should come to wish to be king 
of Great Britain. However much he may de- 
sire it, he knows that it is almost a certain im- 
possibility that he should ever wear that crown. 
1 say almost. It is not quite impossible. These 
are revolutionary times, and, guarded as has 
been the British crown through so many centu- 
ries, it may in the next twenty-five years become 
the stake of political gamblers. 

But suppose the little boy should look up into 
the heavens and long for some bright particular 
star which he sees, that he might have it shining 
on his bosom, and should spend time in making 
plans to get it : that is to attempt an utter im- 
possibility. 

The case of the man and the Peri is the case 
of " loving vanity," cherishing a passion for a 
nothing. The case of the boy and the star is 
the case of " seeking after leasing," trying to 
make an impracticability real. 

Just such delusions men practise upon them- 
selves in regard to their souls. 

(i) As to the law, the moral law which governs 
the world : how general the hope to be able to 
avoid its penalties ! Each violator feels that he 
is something of an exception. Others receive 
the penalty in their own person, but he will not. 
No man ever gives any reason to himself for this 
feeling, and never even states it in words. But 
he does feel so. We have all had that experience 
at some time. 

We do not recollect that few things so show 



the love of the Heavenly Father as the certainty 
with which the penalties follow the violations of 
the law. We feel vaguely that He is good and 
loves us, and cannot see us suffer. Yes ; but He 
loves every other man just as He loves me ; and 
if His law did not surround that other man with 
arms so loving and strong as to hold me off 
when I am disposed to injure him, then I could 
have no assurance that I should be so protected 
when my time came. 

It can only be in a figure of speech that the 
Heavenly Father can be said to strike any man 
in anger. He loves His law more than He loves 
any one of His children, simply because His law 
is the representation of His love for all His 
children. It is false that we should be happier 
in the violation of the moral law : it is vanity to 
hope to be able to violate that law with impunity. 
Why do we love this vanity ? Why do we seek 
after this leasing ? 

(2) Just as vain is the hope of overthrowing the 
law and turning the universe over to anarchy by 
vast combinations of free and active intellects. 
" Though hand join in hand the wicked shall not 
be unpunished." Each man is perfectly free, as 
free to disobey a law as God is to enact a law. 
He could not be otherwise and be a man. But 
that is all he can do. And if the whole race of 
human and angelic beings should unite in a de- 
liberative assembly and unanimously vote that 
the moral law should be considered as of no 
binding effect, their decision would come to 
nothing. If they proceeded to act on their de- 
cision and to live in disregard of the demands of 
the law, the law would soon assert itself with un- 
diminished rigor. 

Nothing shows the sublime self-sufficiency and 
the absolute necessity of the moral law more 
than the fact that men and angels are free, so 
that with unbound hands they might all together 
smite the law. and it would stand firm, less moved 
than would be Gibraltar by the touch of a swal- 
low's wing. 

It were easier for hands human, or infernal, 
or supernal, or all together, to snap the taut 
cable of gravitation which holds God's fleets of 
worlds on the ocean of space, than to break 
down that law which is the walls of the house of 
His children, a home He has erected for their 
safety, to keep out Chaos and old Night. 

Why do you love the empty thought of law- 
lessness? Why do you seek after the leasing of 
a world without a government ? There is noth- 
ing to be gained by either the one or the other, 
even if both were achieved. 



Leasing. 



163 



III. Lastly, I call your thoughts to another 
form of loving vanity and seeking after leasing. 
It is found in the attempt to make a false life 
real; and this comes from the love one has for 
an empty life, which is the most consummate 
vanity. 

A real life is one that is full of plans and pur- 
poses for personal improvement and for general 
usefulness. It does not necessarily involve pov- 
erty and a struggle for bread. The fact is, that 
when a man is under the whip and spur of phys- 
ical necessities, he is not sure, after all his plan- 
ning and working, whether he would ever be 
anything but an idler if the necessity had not 
pressed sore upon him. 

The real man is he who has secure estates and 
abundant incomes, so that he might lie abed all 
his lifetime or spend whole winters on soft 
lounges, toasting his feet and reading French 
novels; but who does not: who rather gives 
faithful attention to all his property and lays out 
his income for God and humanity with the same 
carefulness as if he were a greedy miser intent 
on selfish ends. 

He also is a real man who has no such finan- 
cial resources, but fills his whole life with useful 
work because he loves his Father in heaven and 
1 1 is brethren upon earth. 

It is so low to desire to have nothing to do ! 
And yet how we love this vanity ! Sometimes, 
even in this busy city, we find men and women 
who seem to consider it a distinction to have 
nothing to do, who evidently regard a yawn as 
the most perfectly graceful action possible to 
man or woman, — people who have no employ- 
ment, pursuit, or vocation beyond the adorning 
of their persons and the gratification of their 
desires. The morning breaks on them without 
a purpose, the night closes on them without an 
achievement. They are dainty, squeamish, 
selfish, inane Sybarites. They do not like any- 
thing solid. They seek the empty. They like 
what is like themselves, — things hollow. They 
prefer a bubble to a world, because it is not too 
big, nor too rough, nor too solid. They seek 
only what will give them present enjoyment, 
and what can be had without too much seeking. 
That is the reason they love and seek van- 
ity and leasing, because vanity and falsehood 
are lying all about us largely and abun- 
dantly. 

This is certainly a false life. And yet these 
people are striving to consider it real, to make 
it real to themselves. When such a life is closed 
there is no residuum, but worthless ashes ; there 
is no monument; there is no fountain opened; 



there is no word spoken to go in musical rever- 
berations round the world and down the ages. 
Such lives are like a meaningless sentence 
written on water. They leave no legacy to time, 
they send no present to eternity. They that love 
them are like unto them, and both are vanity. 

It would scarcely be proper to call a life of 
ambition an empty life. It is often crowded 
and busy enough, sometimes overladen with toil 
and labor; but it is "leasing," it is deception. 
It is not a reality. The very objects of selfish 
ambition are delusions and snares. Look at 
them closely. Do not be dazzled. Consider 
what they take, and what they bring, and tell 
your hearts whether they be not most deceitful. 
Rank and power are their most attractive forms. 
To be in position, acknowledged, and known, 
and talked about, is the desire of so many 
people. If that could be their lot, they would 
be happy ! How false an estimate of things is 
this ! And how the history of the great has 
contradicted it ! 

Who thinks of the responsibility which power 
brings? How many demands are made upon 
it ! How many most unreasonable things are 
expected of any man who attains high position ! 
How many are plotting his overthrow by means 
that are most foul ! He must be servant of all. 
He may do his best, and yet he will disappoint 
the expectations of many who will secretly work 
against him. " Uneasy is the head that wears a 
crown." " Seekest thou great things for thy- 
self? seek them not." Let them seek you. 
Do not overvalue them. Then if they go, you 
can afford to let them go, and not be heart- 
broken. To have plotted and labored and 
toiled and sacrificed ease of heart, peace of 
conscience, one's principles, to gain a crown ; 
to gain it, and then lose it: oh ! what a " leas- 
ing" is this ! What a seeking for what is most 
false as it is most alluring ! 

Go, ask the men that have their millions, oi 
their marshal's batons, or their imperial crowns, 
if all that was promised to the hope has been 
fulfilled to the heart. Why then seek to make 
real and pure what is empty and false ? 

It is not in the things possessed but in the 
manner of possessing that the whole secret of 
happiness and success lies. No man should de- 
spise great and splendid fortunes, whether of 
money or position. But it is not the gold, and 
it is not the rank that bring happiness and good- 
ness. It is the way we employ them. A man 
may extract more profit and pleasure and use- 
fulness from a thousand dollars than another 
man can from a million; but if the former 



164 Leasing. 



could have the million and keep his principles, 
and be therewith proportionately faithful to his 
God and his fellows, it is better to have a mil- 
lion. If a man has learned to be faithful over 
a few things, and can maintain his faithfulness 
in ruling over ten cities, it is better to have the 
ten cities. But the ' 'leasing" resides in the 
supposition that the fortune and the power will 
bring goodness, strength, and happiness. 

Let me now beseech you to examine your 
hearts and see if you have not been in love with 
some of these emptinesses, and have not been 
seeking after some of these falsities. 

Have you not been exerting yourself greatly 
to make real to yourselves such a God as has not 
existence, a God whose tyranny might justify 
you in sin, or whose lack of moral character 
might make you feel easy in licentious courses? 
Have you not been soothing yourselves with 
false hopes — hopes that somehow you would 
, avoid the penalty of a law you had violated, or 
that somehow in the chances and changes of the 
universe there would come such an overthrow of 
all law that there would be no remembrance of 
former things, and all responsibility and all ac- 
countability would be thrown aside, and your- 
selves set free on boundless license? Have you 
not lived as if the only things that were attract- 
ive were such as had in themselves nothing of 
reality, truth, goodness, help, or stability ? 
Have you not lost hours of your precious life in 
dreamy reveries and listless longings for a life 
of emptiness? Have you not bent your powers 
in securing that which could be of no permanent 
avail to you, glittering social baubles, little dis- 
tinctions not known beyond your circle, wider 
notoriety that was just as empty ? 

How long, O how long will you pursue this 



folly ? How long will you love vanity ? How 
long will ye seek after leasing? 

Suppose you find a lie and cling to it, having 
persuaded yourself that it is the truth : will that 
make it a truth ? 

Think of the fearfulness of the discovery of 
the falsehood, a discovery made when it is too 
late to mend it, the whole life having been ex- 
pended under the influence of the untrue. A 
man goes through life believing that place and 
power will somehow give strength for the hour 
of weakness and satisfaction to the wants of the 
soul. They never do ; but he persists in believ- 
ing that somehow, at some time, they will. At 
the very last he makes the discovery of their 
insufficiency. Mammon has deceived him, the 
World has been a delusion, the Flesh has been 
a snare, the Devil has been a liar. The vanity 
dissipates. He finds that it is thin air, and 
more, that it is very nothingness. All that he 
can do in his desperation is to shriek after the dis- 
solving views of his deceivers, "Vanity ! vanity ! 
vanity !" But the more certainly they are very 
nothings, the more certainly his curse comes 
to nothing, not hurting them, not helping him. 
He may look at Mammon, and in his despera- 
tion shriek, " A lie ! a lie ! a lie !" Yes, Mam- 
mon represents deception ; but all the falser 
Mammon is, all the more impotent one's exe- 
cration of one's deceiver. 

O break yourselves from the love of vanity J 
O cease the fond and ruinous pursuit of a lie ! 

Seek the truth. You need not be bewildered. 
Jesus saves you. He says, "I am THE Truth." 
Serve Him. Seek Him. Follow all His steps. 
Obey all His words. Let the shams go. Drop 
all the empty things of earth, and lay your graso 
on the eternal realities ! 



XXVII. 

|j>My of Snt*tfa0 mx own §ftwt. 

" HE THAT TRUSTETH IN HIS OWN HEART IS A FOOL." — PROVERBS, XXVIII. 26. 



To have the best uses of anything, we must 
know the end for which it was made, and the 
characteristics of its constitution. 

This is true of whatever is constructed by man 
or created by God. 

Any attempt through wilfulness or ignorance, 
to divert it from the design of its creator, will 
issue in loss of time and in probable injury to 
the operator, and to the object upon which the 
violence is inflicted. You would make poor 
headway in an effort to make a type-setting ma- 
chine do the work of a McCormick's Reaper, or 
of a common water-pump. Among God's crea- 
tures you cannot make inorganic matter secure 
the results of vegetable life, nor any tree that 
grows discharge the functions of an animal. 

The oak was designed to grow up in majestic 
robustness, with weighty body and tough, strong 
limbs. The wide and deep ramifications of its 
roots afford sufficient basis for its enormous 
weight of body and branches. It is made to 
battle with the storm, and grow strong in its gi- 
gantic wrestlings with the tempests. It is thus 
rendered compact and sinewy, that it may be cut 
into boards for houses, and sides for the mighty 
ships that go down into the heavings of the aw- 
ful ocean. 

The woodbine requires no such foundation in 
its roots, as it is designed to creep on the ground 
in humility, or to be trained into graceful festoons 
upon some strong and lofty supporter. 

To attempt to cultivate the sturdy forest mon- 
arch into the soft and sinuous and graceful wind- 
ings of the vine, or the vine into the sturdy inde- 
pendence and loftiness of the oak, were to waste 
one's strength with the certainty of a failure in 
the futile effort, and of an injury to the plants. 

When we come to examine the heart of man, 
his passionate and emotional nature, we soon 
learn that it was not intended to be self-support- 
ing and independent. It does not find its coun- 
terpart in the oak, but in the vine. The heart 
cannot trust to itself. It grovels and lies along 
the earth until it finds some strong support to 
which it may attach itself. Up to the height of 
this great support it will climb. If that support 



be low, its exaltation can never be great, for it 
will never, from the top of its supporter, shoot 
itself up into independent and powerful growth. 
It is a very grave mistake in any man to place 
reliance on his own heart for greatness, or growth, 
or happiness. 

I. Let us describe a few classes of men who 

TRUST IN THEIR OWN HEART. 

(1.) It is most natural, first of all, to speak of 
the young. And it is most natural for the 
young to trust in their own hearts. The heart 
of a young man is the most early developed part 
of his nature. His head has not had its growth 
and culture. The law is, that that is not first 
which is spiritual, but that which is natural. 
The coarser is first and the finer last. First the 
animal man, then the intellectual, and then the 
spiritual. The young feel the glow and rush of 
passion. It seems to them to be so much more 
progressive than sageness and prudence and 
wisdom. They go so fast that everything which 
is not in a whirl seems to them to be asleep. 
They grow impatient of older men, whom they 
consider timid, without heart and pluck, attrib- 
uting their moderate counsels to lack of energy 
and ' 'rush." They forget that this heat of 
theirs is not strength, and is not a continuous 
power capable of bearing the strains and pressure 
of every-day life. 

When, therefore, they hear two voices, one 
from without, giving caution and advising a 
steady gait and the circumspection of their ways; 
and one from within, crying " Forward! forward!" 
the former sounds cold and hard, the latter thrills 
and lifts them. If it occurs to them that they 
may meet with difficulties and obstructions, they 
feel as if all they have to do is to imitate the 
reckless engineer, and put on a head of steam 
and leap the obstacle or throw it from the track. 
The young are so hearty ! If they could but be 
made to feel that that heartiness is the very thing 
to have if it can be kept as a servant, waiting on 
wisdom, and not be allowed to become the domi- 
neering master over the head and the whole life! 
It is the fire, which it is quite well to have under 
the boiler in the engine, and there it may move 



166 



Folly of Trusting our own Heart. 



the whole train ; but never yet was the train pro- 
pelled along any track by setting all the cars on 
fire. 

In his most thoughtful moments, every true 
young man must admit that nearly all the sad 
blunders of his life have sprung from ill-regulated 
affections too blindly trusted. Our very virtues 
lean to error's side. Our affectionateness, so 
sweet and in many aspects so beautiful, betrays 
us cften into what we sorely regret. The heart 
of the most noble and pure boy in this congre- 
gation is not to be trusted ; it is to be watched 
and trained and used wisely, that it may not 
expend upon trifles and worthless objects the 
strength which it must hereafter be called upon 
to contribute to the warming and beautifying of 
life. The heart must never be in the lead. It 
was not made to guide. It must be taught do- 
cility, and it must be taught early. It is a sad 
sign in any community where the young accus- 
tom themselves to make their feelings the 
standard of judgment and rule of life. 

Especially when there comes the sense of hav- 
ing stained the life with sin, is it folly to attempt 
to find some purifying process to be wrought by 
the heart. " Wherewithal shall a young man 
cleanse his way?" asked the royal psalmist. His 
answer, my young friend, is noteworthy: "By 
taking heed thereto according to Thy word." 
Your safety is in the resolute bending of your 
life to the teachings of Holy Scripture, whether 
your heart feel free to it or not. Listen to no 
such absurd phrases as "the dictates of con- 
science." Each man's conscience is merely the 
echo of his heart, his emotional nature, to the 
decisions of his intellect, and has no influence 
whatever upon the right or wrong. Do not mis- 
take the desires of your heart for the voice of 
God, the fierceness of passion for stable strength 
or spiritual power. Do not be restless under the 
advice of friends ; do not throw from your necks 
the reins of God. 

(2.) There are those who LOOK INTO their 
HEARTS FOR THEIR God, whose God is really 
the idea begotten of their desires. 

Perhaps you would be surprised if you could 
learn how large this class is, and that you are in 
it. You fancy that the God of the Bible is, at 
the bottom of your heart, the God to whom you 
acknowledge, at least, that you ought to yield 
allegiance. Perhaps you are mistaken. 

You know the old Greek mythology. They 
had their gods and goddesses, great and small, 
and each was the personification of some human 
passion. Those gods had no existence in reality. 
There was no Olympus, nor Jupiter, nor Mars, 



nor Mercury, nor Minerva, nor Venus. These 
words do not represent personalities, but ideals. 
Those gods were "nothing in the world," as the 
Apostle says. The same Apostle quoted to the 
Athenians from one of their own poets, who had 
taught them that they were the offspring of the 
gods. If it had suited the Apostle's argument, 
he could have shown them that the gods were 
their offspring. The whole mythology grew out 
of the Greek heart and was shaped by the Greek 
intellect. The Greeks were not the children of 
the gods — the gods were the children of the 
Greeks. It is so of all the gods of the heathen; 
they are made like unto themselves. 

You would not wish to bring back the old 
poetic Paganism, would you? The temples of 
the dethroned deities would not be rightly placed 
even under the sun of our Southern clime, nor 
be considered ornamental to the hills of our New 
England landscape. But are you not doing 
something very like this? 

Years ago a noted French lecturer said to his 
class, "Now, gentlemen, I proceed to create 
God. " That sounds to you much like blasphemy, 
does it not? Are you not doing the same 
thing? He was about to show metaphysically 
the conception of the idea of God and its growth 
in the human mind. But your God, perhaps, is 
formed in your hearts. 

Sometimes we hear arguments and appeals 
which let us into the real moral condition of the 
man. Some one will strive to show you, for 
instance, that God cannot pursue such and such 
a course toward his children — the very course 
which He has positively declared that He is 
pursuing, — for the reason that we should not do 
so toward our fellow-creatures. The argument 
implies that God is only a greater man. This is 
the spirit of the Colenso school. They attack 
the Old Testament in its God. The Bible says 
God commanded certain things at which any 
man of average British or American civiliza- 
tion would be shocked ! You are therefore 
called upon to give up the Jehovah of the Bible 
and take the god whose behavior can " pass mus- 
ter" when reviewed by average British or Amer- 
ican civilization! My friends, "the world by 
wisdom knew not God." You cannot "create 
God" — the God who made all worlds. Your 
god will be painfully like yourselves. It is hor- 
rible to hear men arraigning their Maker. If He 
do not reveal Himself to us we shall never know 
Him. You must find where He has revealed 
Himself ; that is the work for your reason. You 
must then unquestionably obey Him, yield 
utterly to Him, feel that that is right which 



Folly of Trusting our own Heart. 



167 



He does, because He does it ; that is the work 
for your heart. But your heart must not beget 
a god. Look into your heart. Examine your 
moral nature fairly, and then tell yourself whether 
you do not think that it would be a most 
anomalous, absurd, and outrageous thing for you 
to be the father of your own god ! That is your 
god which you trust. You must not make your 
heart your god. And surely you must not try 
the God of the Bible by the standard of your heart. 
(3.) There are those who SUFFER their 

FEELINGS TO DECIDE THEIR DOCTRINES. 

Present such people any moral teaching, and 
they will not take it to the Bible, God's standard 
of truth among men, nor will they even give it 
a fair verdict from human reason : but, they 
must ascertain their feelings. If they feel that 
the statement is true, they will receive it ; if not, 
they well reject it. These variable tides of the 
heart are taken as the measure of truth. Now, 
if the human heart were perfect, and the in- 
stincts of our nature were unerring, we might 
rely upon our feelings for our belief. But there 
is not a man in Christendom who does not 
know that at one time he takes a great delight 
in the contemplation of a moral proposition 
which at another time is distasteful or abhorrent 
to him. There must be some standard outside 
of ourselves. 

Right does not subsist in our nature. Man 
cannot make right. God only knows of Himself 
what is right, because He only knows His own 
will entirely. He must teach it to His poor 
human children. That in which He teaches it 
must be the standard. He certainly does not 
reveal it in our natural hearts. It is most un- 
philosophical and most immoral to say that 
what is taught in the Bible must be wrong, 
because we feel it to be wrong ; cannot be 
right, because we do not feel it to be right. 
And yet not a hundred miles from the spot on 
which I stand it is said to have been asserted 
from the pulpit, "If the Bible teach that, let 
the Bible slide." Then, what is the standard? 
You must first settle whether the Bible be the 
Word of God. If no, then you can throw it out 
of the question. Then you must hunt the stand- 
ard. But if yes, then it cannot be compared 
with anything else ; all else must be compared 
with it. Otherwise you abandon society to fanat- 
icism. Each man becomes an infallible pope, 
and an exterminating crusader. 

You do not receive such a doctrine because it 
offends your moral sense ? 

Do you not know that that may be prima facie 
evidence of its truth ? 



An unhealthy body rejects both wholesome 
food and profitable medicine, the very thing it 
needs. Are you so divine a person that your 
very emotions are indubitable evidences of the 
correctness of doctrines? Your self-conceit is 
almost enormous enough to be sublime. You 
assume that you are so pure that all pure things 
will be agreeable to you, and all impure things 
disagreeable. How did you make that discovery ? 
Your belief in such a proposition discredits your 
head and heart at once. No, my friend : you 
must not trust to your heart for your doctrines, 
but you must make the doctrines of the Gospel 
of the Son of God the teachers and formers of 
your heart. 

(4.) There is a class of religionists WHO 
SUBSTITUTE FEELINGS FOR DUTIES. 

This phase of the deception of trusting to one's 
own heart takes different hues. 

You will find some Christians always intensely 
anxious as to the state of their feelings. If they 
can only feel right, that is, have pleasant feel- 
ings, have no compunctions of conscience, no 
distress of mind, be gay or serene, they find a 
religious life as easy as floating down stream. 
And no matter what else may be, if they do 
not have those feelings they increase their 
wretchedness by reflecting on the absence of 
their dear delights. They "trust to their own 
hearts." Now it must certainly be considered 
very unphilosophical to exclude religion from the 
domain of the heart. It is adapted to our whole 
nature, physical, intellectual, and spiritual. The 
emotions will be excited by any truly religious 
process of the soul, but to depend upon the feel* 
ings, or to be anxious about the state of the 
feelings, is most unsafe. 

We may superinduce a condition which seems 
to be the emotional evidences of a proper state 
of the soul, and it may be altogether counter- 
feit. On the other hand, we may be right with 
God and man, by striving to do right and attain 
to everlasting life, and yet be in heaviness for a 
season through manifold temptations. A cloud 
may be between our eyes and the sun. 

It is not with feeling that we are to concern 
ourselves, but with duty. That is something 
which is quite comprehensible. We need be in 
no doubt there. The post of duty is ours. The 
feeling may come or go. It is not the first aim 
of religion to make men beautiful, but to make 
them strong ; not to make them happy, but to 
make them good. The strong will produce the 
.beautiful in good time, and holiness will produce 
happiness. Are you doing your duty to God 
and your fellow-men ? Yes ? Then go about 



168 



Folly of Trusting our own Heart. 



your daily work, and nightly sleep in peace. 
You have the ocean in you : do not trouble 
yourself about the tides. 

But some excuse themselves from doing what 
their duty is, because they do not feel like it ! 
And they trust their poor, hard, slothful hearts 
to their destruction. Do not feel like it? You 
employ a clerk and give him fifty or a hundred 
dollars a week to do a certain legitimate work at 
a certain reasonable time. It then becomes his 
duty. By-and-by he is absent from his post or 
fails to do his work, and you remonstrate, 

" You were not in the office at the right time 
to-day, nor yesterday: were you sick?" 

" No, sir." 

'•'Any illness in your family, or other cause of 
detention ?" 
"No, sir." 

"Then why have you been absent, and why 
is your work not done?" 

" Oh, I do not feel like coming down so early, 
and do not feel like writing those letters." 

Would you quietly accept that excuse and go 
on paying him his hundred dollars a week, or 
would you discharge your clerk? 

A man owes you ten thousand dollars. You 
go to collect the bill. He declines to pay. You 
remonstrate : "Did you not receive the goods?" 

"Yes." 

"Were they not just what you ordered and I 
represented?" 
"Yes." 

"They were delivered in good time?" 
"Yes." 

"And this is the day appointed for the pay- 
ment ?" 

u Certainly." 

"Then why do you not pay me? Have you 
lost all ? Are you not able to pay ?" 

" O, amply able, but / do not feel like it." 

What would you feel like doing to him- ? 
And yet so you treat God. It was your duty to 
be at such a service. You were absent simply be- 
cause you did not feel like being present. On the 
first Sunday of the month was Holy Communion. 
Some of you left the church after the sermon. 
How did you dare do so ? He is the Lover of 
your soul, the dearest and best. He gave His life 
for you, and died with the desire that all the 
world might know He loves you ; and so He 
established this simple, solemn memorial of love 
and sacrament of sacrifice, to keep alive the 
memory of His love until He came again. 
With lips about to drink the bitterness of death 
for you, He tremulously said, " Do this in remem- 
brance of M*e." Was ever holier duty enjoined 



by tenderer reason ? And you did not. Why ? 
Because you did not feel like it! O, what a 
horrible reason is this ! O, how terrible must 
be that worldliness, that absorption in business 
or pleasure, which kept you from this sacred 
remembrance ! You trusted to your heart and 
openly failed to do your duty. Print on your 
minds that saying of John Wesley's, which, if 
he had more accurately said "fanatical" instead 
of " enthusiastic," would be, as perhaps it now 
is, the greatest saying outside the Bible: 
"Trample under foot that enthusiastic doctrine 
that you are not to do good unless your hearts 
feel free to it. " 

(5.) There are those who depend upon, their 
own hearts for a supply of strength to resist 
temptation or to support in trouble. 

Assaults upon our moral constitution, call 
them by what name you will, are familiar pas- 
sages in the history of each human being. They 
are unexpected freshets, rising around the 
edifice of our character and sweeping away, as a 
flood sweeps, all things that are not weighty 
enough or sufficiently firmly fixed to resist the 
surging deluge. No man yet has found himself 
sufficiently weighty to retain his position when 
such enormous floods have set in on his soul. 
He has been lifted, moved, loosed, dropped, and 
broken. Who ever went out in his strength to 
meet the Goliath of temptation and has not been 
slain ? There must be other strength. There 
must be a fixture to a foundation from which we 
cannot be wrenched. Whatever our purposes, 
designs, and culture, there is not in us the ability 
to resist a well-placed and well-pushed tempta- 
tion. That very state of heart upon which we 
have relied for success to turn the seductive evil 
aside, has been the very condition making us 
most subject to the power of the evil. The door 
we have placed to keep it out has been the 
portal of entrance. The unaided, the unsancti- 
fied heart has never been able to make its way 
through this evil world unscathed, unruined. A 
proper sense of the infirmities of the heart keeps 
a man as far as possible from the line of danger. 
He that trusteth to his own heart rushes into 
destruction. 

Nor are there in the human heart fountains of 
consolation for the seasons of affliction, depres- 
sion, and distress that happen to all human lives. 
The fierce heats that make life a hot and barren 
desert, dry up the slender streams of the human 
heart. And yet there are those who know no 
other founts or wells from which they may draw 
water for their thirsty souls — thousands who are 
trusting to their hearts to carry them through 



Folly of Trusting our own Heart. 



169 



the terrible storms of life— its mighty, its blind- 
ing tempests and its fierce and bloody battles. 
They trust that when father and mother forsake 
them ; when friend and lover are put into dark- 
ness ; when the earth sounds hollow to their 
tread and the heaven seems a vault of stone to 
their cry, they will be able to brace themselves 
and maintain their dignity and comfort by force 
of their natural will — to look into their hearts and 
find at least all that may be necessary to sustain. 

(6. ) The last class I shall have time to men- 
tion comprises those who depend upon their good 
resolutions to repent, if not sooner, at least in the 
time when they are dying. 

A few plain questions ought to show any man 
the absurdity of such a position. Ought a man 
ever to repent, change his course of life, of the 
thought, of feeling ? Why ? Is he wrong ? If 
so, is there any more reason why he should re- 
pent when he is sure he will not live a day than 
there is when he is in full health and active busi- 
ness ? What is that reason ? Is it that it is his 
last chance ? Do you not see that that reason 
could never superinduce genuine repentance and 
change of real character? The very fact that he 
was taking advantage of the supposed last chance 
would deprive his supposed repentance of all its 
valuable characteristics, its voluntariness, and its 
hatred of wrong. The desire to dodge the pen- 
alty and the abhorrence of the sin are two dis- 
tinct things. The man that duly repents would 
rather live in hell right than dwell in heaven 
wrong. 

No ; if you put off your repentance to the day 
you are dying, I must assure you that you will 
not repent then, because you cannot. The fact 
of the deliberate postponement will preclude the 
possibility of the mental and moral condition 
necessary to a real change of heart. 

In contemplating the time of your departure, 
lay aside the thought of pain and weakness, the 
snapping of dearest and strongest ties, and all 
strangeness of the position of a soul about to 
invade unknown territories of being. Suppose 
they should have no effect upon you ; is it prob- 
able your heart would prompt you to repent? 
If so, does not your heart prompt you now? If 
it do prompt now, why do you not 7'epent? 
There is some reason. You are strong enough 
to conquer the feeling, or you are too weak to 
yield to it. Will you not be strong enough in 
the dying hour to postpone the work, or too 
weak to accomplish it ? Every day that you do 
not repent increases your moral weakness, and 
the last day of your earthly existence will be your 
very weakest day. 



A man caught in the rapids of Niagara river 
is warned to pull oar and come out of his peril to 
the shore, while far above the Falls. Suppose 
he should say to himself, " Of course I must go 
to shore ; of course I do not intend to be dashed 
over that fearful precipice into the tumultuous 
caldron that boils at the bottom. But not yet. 
I will float a while down this pleasant stream." 
Do you believe that when he comes to the edge 
of the precipice his canoe, his oar, his arm, and 
his will are to be stronger to pluck him from his 
danger than they were higher up the river ? 
And do you not know that the power of the 
stream and the momentum his frail bark has 
acquired are incalculably greater just at the time 
of destruction ? 

And you — what are you doing? To the 
heart which befools you when you have all your 
faculties best about you, you are going to trust 
yourself at that time when you are least able to 
detect its wiles. You expect to approach the 
edge of Niagara, increasing in speed every second, 
and, just at the instant when you are moving 
most swiftly, and the bewildering light of all that 
is horrible in the white hell that boils at the bot- 
tom flashes up on your brain, you expect to be 
able to lean back on your oars and pull yourself 
directly along the line at which you feel the 
enormous pressure of that immeasurable tide, 
into a place of safety. None but Almighty God 
could perform a feat like that. Your postpone- 
ment of your reformation to the hour of death 
is just such mad trusting to your poor, weak, 
foolish heart. 

II. Having incidentally pointed out the wrong 
in the particular cases we have noticed, it re- 
mains simply to indicate the general reasons for 
the assertion in the text. 

(i.) A man is a fool who trusts in his own 
heart, because he trusts to what he knows is un- 
trustworthy. 

It is a common saying among the merchants, 
that if a man swindles them once, it is his fault; 
if a second time, it is theirs. In the ordinary 
affairs of life we have prudence. We do not fall 
a second time into the same pit. The most as- 
tute and prudent may, at any time, be led once to 
trust what is not trustworthy, simply because he 
has not had the means or time to ascertain its 
reliability ; but he that trusts what he knows will 
deceive him is simply a fool, as the text says. 
Now every man knows that the human heart is 
not to be trusted. Take the whole circle of 
your acquaintance. Hear what each says of all 
the others. Believe half of it. What a picture 
that presents of human nature ! 



170 



Folly of Trusting our own Heart, 



The heart deceives others. There is probably 
not a single transparent heart in this assembly. 
There is no man who would open his whole 
heart to his mother or his wife, no matter what 
may have been the confidential intimancy be- 
tween them. 

And even when we strive to live as honestly 
as possible toward our fellow-men, we find our 
hearts deceiving ourselves. We had supposed 
ourselves honest, until some great gain offered a 
bribe. We had believed ourselves pure, until 
some huge and ugly lust overwhelmed us. We 
had fancied ourselves brave, until some sudden 
apparition of danger frightened us from our 
proprieties. O ! then, what humiliations fol- 
lowed ! We can endure to have deceived our 
fellow-men, humbling as that discovery is; but 
nothing so grinds us in the dust as the discovery 
that we have deceived our own selves, and be- 
come the dupes of our own hearts. There is no 
man who has examined himself who has not 
made that discovery at some period of his life, 
and he is a most fortunate man who has not made 
that painful discovery repeatedly. Is he not a 
fool who, after this discovery, still trusts? What 
do you think of a man who trusts a rogue — a 
rogue whose frequent discharges from prison 
have been as frequent entrances upon courses of 
villainy, — and trusts him as if he were the spot- 
less and incorruptible judge ? 

(2.) And he trusts what he knows is wicked. 

We know the wickedness of our own hearts 
and the wickedness of other hearts. No man 
trusts any other man to all he has. No wise 
man fails to take precautions and securities. It 
has become so common that no one makes any 
objection to a demand for security. All such 
precautionary acts cry out against the poor hu- 
man heart and confirm the terrific verdict of the 
Holy Scripture : " The heart is deceitful above 
all things, and desperately wicked /" What do 
checks and guards and vouchers mean ? What 
say your bolts and bars, your iron safes, your 
locks and keys, your bonds, your laws, your po- 
lice, your courts and prisons ? Do they not cry 
out, " He that trusteth in the human heart is a 
fool ?" And there never was a man arrested by 
police, convicted by jury, sentenced by judge, 
imprisoned by jailor, or hanged by sheriff, who 
has not been, at one period of his life, as pure as 
you, and having just as much trust in his own 
heart. Every sinner has trusted to his own heart, 
and found it deceitful and wicked. Is he not a 
fool who, in face of such enormous warning, 
repeats the madness ? 

Let me read you a striking passage from the 



writings of Sir James Mackintosh. It is a marvel- 
lous specimen of style, putting great and many 
thoughts in a few words. But it is not as a 
specimen of fine English and admirable rhetoric 
I adduce it, but because it brings an unintended 
proof of what I am striving to impress. The 
great lawyer probably had no thought of the 
moral uses to which the passage might be put. 
He was thinking of the grandeur of the science 
of law. I read it slowly. See how pregnant Is 
every phrase. " There is not, in my opinion, in 
the whole compass of human affairs, so noble a 
spectacle as that which is displayed in the prog- 
ress of jurisprudence ; where we may contem- 
plate the cautious and unwearied exertions of wise 
men through a long course of ages, withdrawing 
every case, as it arises, from the dangerous power 
of discretion and subjecting it to inflexible rules; 
extending the domain of justice and reason, and 
gradually contracting within the narrowest pos- 
sible limits the domain of brutal force and 
arbitrary will." 

His " opinion" is worth having. He was a 
great philosopher and a man in public life. He 
surveyed " the whole compass of human affairs." 
He saw many great spectacles therein, but there 
was no "so noble a spectacle" as the " progress 
of jurisprudence" "displayed." And when 
called to contemplate that, what do we behold? 

It is the march of right into the domain of 
wrong. It is a great work employing great men 
through great ages. To do what? " Unweariedly" 
these " wise men" were to make, not simple 
attempts, but " exertions" through along course 
of ages, to withdraw " every case," not occasional 
cases, " from the dangerous power of discretion." 
Why is the power of discretion dangerous? 
Cannot good and wise kings be trusted to admin- 
ister affairs at discretion ? No, the very posses- 
sion of power is dangerous. The human heart 
is not to be trusted in the best and strongest and 
loftiest men. No discretion ! The noble science 
of jurisprudence trusts no human heart. To 
"rules" that are " inflexible," which even the 
heart cannot bend if it would, every case is to be, 
not simply referred, but " subjected." See how 
this master paints human nature. The world of 
action is in the "domain of" either " brutal 
force" or " arbitrary will." Jurisprudence labors 
to "contract this domain" within the "narrow- 
est possible limits," and to do this by " extend- 
ing the domain of justice and reason." 

What a tremendous satire on human nature ! 
Is there anything among the fervid poets to 
equal this fearful picture by the cold-blooded 
lawyer ? 



Folly of Thrusting our own Heart. 



171 



And now, sick of human nature, saddened by 
thedeceitfulnessof our own hearts, and depressed 
by the remembrance of how fondly we have 
trusted our fellow-men, and how grossly we have 
been deceived, is it not time to ask ourselves 
whether there be not some One whom we can 
trust, upon whom we may rely, who will never 
leave nor forsake us, whom sickness and sorrow 
and poverty and death will not drive from us ? 
Is there such a One, greater and better than our 
hearts ? 

Hear! 

Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, accepted mar- 
tyrdom near the close of the second Christian 
century. He was probably the angel of the 
Church in Smyrna to whom Christ, by the hand 
of St. John, wrote, " Be thou faithful unto death, 
and I will give thee a crown of life." When the 
Roman consul urged him to curse Christ, the 
noble old saint said, "What! I have trusted 
Jesus eighty and six years, and He has done me 
nothing but good ; shall I desert Him who has 



been so long faithful to me ? I am a Christian." 
And refusing to be chained, he stood amid the 
fagots and told them to fetch on the fire. 
Whether the story be true, that the flames re- 
fused to burn him, but made an arch over his 
body, and that when he was pierced with a spear 
the blood extinguished the flames, we know that 
this is true, that our Lord Jesus Christ did not 
desert him, but stood by him, and kept his glori- 
ous manhood in its blessed integrity, so that he 
lived a whole man and died an unbroken man, 
and was greater in dying than selfish men are in 
living, and happier in dying than sensual men 
are in living. 

There is your trust. Rest on Him. Believe 
that every word that proceeded out of His mouth 
is to have the full reliance of the whole soul. 
Live by it. Never doubt it. When Christ says 
one thing and your heart says another, hear 
Christ, obey Christ, trust Christ, and you shall 
never be confounded, and never discover that 
you have been a fool. 



XXVIII. 

" NO MAN DIETH TO HIMSELF."— ROMANS, XIV. 7. 



The drift of the Apostle in this chapter was 
toward the correction of harsh judgments against 
those whose opinions and practices do not agree 
with ours. 

Judaism had fallen into great hardness of spirit 
and adherence to formality before the coming of 
Jesus : and that old Judaism, like certain vege- 
table growths, seems most difficult to eradicate 
from the field of the world. It is the spiritual 
nut-grass. It prevails in Christendom. It is 
the occasion of the heart-burnings and quarrels 
and persecutions of Christian sects. 

The fact is, it is the cause of sectarianism. 
The breaking away of sects is on some question 
"of doubtful disputation," such as the Jewish 
Sabbaths, baptisms, meats, temple service, 
and things of that sort, not one of which 
is worth an hour's thought, being old Jewish 
forms which were admirable in their first 
intent, but afterward became hard and empty, 
and were abolished by Jesus. 

Nevertheless, there were those in the Christian 
society in the city of Rome who were still afflicted 
with the rigidity of Judaism, and desired to keep 
the ritualism of the old form of religion with the 
doctrines of the new, to pour the new wine of 
Christianity into the old bottles of churchism. 
They would be hard on the brethren who were 
using the liberty of the gospel. 

It was in human nature to retort by charging 
the Jewish converts with " formalism" and " rest- 
ing in the letter." 

No feuds seem so bitter as those which are 
fought over no material issue. 

Of course, if the Jew in Rome feared that he 
might, through ignorance, buy at the shambles 
or eat at a friend's table meat that had been 
offered to an idol, and therefore chose to con- 
fine himself to nuts and figs, as many of them 
did, it would be unreasonable to find fault with 
him. It was a comfort to him, and did not in- 
terfere with other people, nor with his religious 
principles. But he must not endeavor to force 
his methods on his brethren. If they chose to 
make no distinction, and their principles were 
not shaken by a promiscuous eating of vegetables 



and meats, why should the Jewish brother inter- 
fere ? 

And yet, until they become thoroughly imbued 
with the spirit of Jesus, which is the spirit of 
liberty, men will insist upon conformity. 

We shall never be rid of this temper until we 
come to see the relation of each man to God as 
settling the question of his relation to his fellow- 
men. Our mistake is in reversing this process. 
We determine a man's relation to God by his 
relation to us. If he be in conformity to our 
views, if he follow us, if he adhere to our clique, 
if he espouse and vigorously maintain our dog- 
mas, he is right with God because he is right 
with us. Partisanship makes purity. If he 
served us, of course he served God ! If he was 
against us, of course he was an enemy of God. 

And so, when a man dies after having been 
blasphemous and obscene and a neglecter of God 
and a promoter of evil, if he have served a party 
faithfully, that party will preach him into heaven 
and paint pictures of his reception among the 
blessed and immortalize him in statues, while the 
party against which his talents were directed be- 
lieve that the man went straightway to hell, if 
there be a hell, and if there be not, that the ex- 
istence of such characters as the deceased would 
justify the existence of a place of torment in the 
world beyond the grave. 

It is to correct this violence of judgment and 
this wrong method of judging that the Apos- 
tle Paul writes this argument. 

Each man is the servant of God. 

If a man realize that fact so thoroughly that it 
controls his life, so that he becomes convinced 
that he does not live to himself and does not die 
to himself, the whole selfishness of religion dis- 
appears. 

There is such a thing as selfishness in religion. 
A man may be so intent on saving himself as 
to have no regard for God beyond the use that 
God is to him, no sympathy with the suffering of 
Jesus beyond the atoning influence of His sac- 
rifice on this special Christian's personal salva- 
tion, no particular admiration of heaven beyond 
the comfort which the thought of it gives him 



In Memoriam : Dr. 



Nathanael W. Seat. 



173 



now and the good he hopes to get out of it here- 
after. The salvation of others may be a happy- 
incident in the future history of this selfish 
Christian, and he is willing to see heaven crowd- 
ed because it must be a better sight than an 
empty heaven ; and he is willing to have count- 
less millions singing in heaven because that 
thundering chorus will be so much more glori- 
ous than if his solitary harp and voice made the 
only music in eternity. But that is all his selfish- 
ness sees in the salvation of others. 

Such a Christian would very naturally be very 
impatient with any opposition to his judgment 
and any deviation from his religious practices. 
He judges all his fellow-men, and specially all 
his fellow-Christians, as they "stand" or "fall" 
to him. But Paul vehemently asks, " Who art 
thou that judgest another man's servant? To 
his own master he standeth or falleth." And 
you are not his master : nor are you his slave : 
he belongs to God : you belong to 4 God : he 
does not live to himself: you do not live to 
yourself: he does not die to himself: you do 
not die to yourself. " For none of us liveth to 
himself, and no man dieth to himself; for 
whether we live, we live unto the Lord, and 
whether we die, we die unto the Lord ; whether, 
therefore, we live or die, we are the Lord's." 

This great truth does two things for us. 

1. It breaks up our selfishness. 

We neither live nor die to ourselves. We are 
not, therefore, to turn every stream into the res- 
ervoir of our personal interests and wishes. We 
are not to lead every man to our way of think- 
ing. We are not to hold every man to our 
standard. Every man is to be turned to God. 

2. It takes away our solicitudes. 

If we do not accomplish everything for our- 
selves, we are doing something always for 
another; and that other is THE Lord. We 
are His. He will not forsake His own. Our life 
is thus safe. Our death is thus secure. There 
is a dignity in living and there is a grandeur in 
dying. Our whole existence is identified with 
the life of God. All our operations are wrought 
into His great work of carrying the world for- 
ward to consummations the most sublime. 

It is perhaps more easy to perceive and feel 
that our life is not altogether our own than it is 
to perceive and feel that our death is not 
altogether our own. To human observation it 
would seem that nothing so specially belongs to 
the self of a man, and so little to any one else, 
as his death. 

It is the most solitary fact in each man's 
history. In the most primary production of his 



existence a man's parents have a share. In his 
birth the mother and the child are partners in 
the agony and the joy. Along all the ways of 
life he may have a companion, in all the sorrows 
and joys of life one who sympathizes. In all 
the walks of life he keeps step to the music of 
humanity. But when he comes to die he is 
separated. He is alone. He is bearing a burden 
which none can share. He is fighting a battle, 
single handed, in the dark, in a vacuum in 
which clashing steel can give no sound. 

Or, to change the figure, he has sailed out. 
The cables have been loosened. The anchors 
have been lifted. He is slowly moving from the 
port. The spectators look on in solemnity. He 
glides into the stream. He steams down into 
" The Narrows." A haze gathers about him. But 
long before he is lost to sight he is lost to hearing. 
If he speak, we hear him no longer. If he fire 
the farewell gun, we see the flash down the bay, 
but there are too many intervening sounds and 
we are too far off to hear the report. He goes 
on and on, like a vessel going to sea, until his 
masts are like a speck on the horizon, and then 
he has gone. No firing of cannon, no waving 
of signals, no telegraphic communication can 
reach the ship. It is out on the ocean, and shall 
behold token of land no more until it see the 
birds that come flying and the flowers that come 
floating from the shore on the other side. 

Such seems a man's death to us who see it 
from this side. Out to a certain point we can 
hold communion with him. We can follow him 
in from the market, the forum, the crowded 
assembly. We can gather about his bed in his 
last illness. We can speak to him until his 
hearing becomes obtuse, and make images of 
our solicitous faces on his eyes until vision fails, 
and grasp his hands until he can no longer 
recognize whether it is the presence of love, or 
hypocrisy, or hate; and then, still dying, not 
dead, he is alone. He does not hear his wailing 
wife and children. He does not hear the sob of 
the manly friend who stood by him in all the 
emergencies of life. He is all alone. 

You cannot touch his sensibilities at any point. 
Bankruptcy, poverty, calumny do no longer 
alarm him. You may flash the keen edge of a 
deadly blade before his eyes, and he does not 
wink. You may pluck the flesh from his limbs 
with white-hot pincers, and he does not move. 
Pestilence may be sweeping the city, and he 
cares not. The house may be on fire, and he 
heeds not. He may be lying on the battle-field, 
the field on which has been raging a conflict in 
the result of which he had staked all that a man 



In Memoriam : Br. JVathanael W. Seat. 



values, and he may have been in the front, on fire 
witk enthusiasm, pushing the enemy, cheering 
his own forces, alert, vigorous, vivid, wrapping 
ten thousand times a thousand hearts about him, 
and having the eyes of the civilized world upon 
him. But the fatal blow falls. He sinks, to die. 
He is not dead; but crown and wife and child 
and country and fame have all vanished from 
the brain that was full of them. The artillery 
thunders past him, and he hears not. The cav- 
alry gallop over him, and he heeds not. He is 
alone in the dense centre of massed troops, 
alone, all alone. In the heart of intense life, in 
the core of intense activity, death sweeps a place 
for the man to lay down and die in. 

Nay, we cannot have companion or bride in 
death. The husband and wife on the burning 
deck may lash themselves together, striving to 
make themselves one, and clasp each the other 
in the last embrace of fondest love, and leap 
together into the sea; but down there, in the 
waves, heart to heart, and cheek to cheek, each 
dies as lonely as if the other were a thousand 
leagues away. They cannot die together. A 
moment comes when the bodily embrace is for- 
gotten in a solitary wrestle, down in the dark 
waters, with the personal fate. 

A mine may cave in on a hundred workmen 
and mash them together so closely that they 
become one compact mass of flesh and bone, and 
yet each of the hundred dies as solitary and 
alone as if he were the only one buried alive. 

To human imagination nothing seems so 
indescribably and solemnly and awfully lonely 
as the act and the fact of dying. 

To save us from the breathless terror of this 
isolation our most holy faith comes in with Paul's 
assurance, "No man dieth unto himself." That 
breaks the solitude. And then it adds, ''If we 
die we die unto the Lord." That binds the 
human hope to the things beyond the grave. 
"Whether we live or die, we are the Lord's." 
That sanctities all activity and all aspiration. 
Looked at from this side the death-fact is the 
loneliest : looked at from the other side it is the 
most cheering, 

We can now contemplate the assertion which 
Paul makes of every Christian man, "No man 
dieth to himself," in several aspects which may 
make the study profitable. 

(i.) First of all we have no choice as to the 
time. 

We cannot say, "I will stay in the field and 
labor in the vineyard so long, and then I will go 
to my rest in my home." We cannot engage to 
serve so long and then cease. We need not be 



anxious to live to a good old age or be desirous 
of departing early. It is a very morbid thing in 
young people to wish to pass from human activi- 
ties in early life. It was a fond and foolish 
adage of the ancients, "Whom the gods love die 
young," Whom the Lord loves live out all their 
days. These days may be few; then they are 
early with the Lord. They may be many ; then 
they are crowded with opportunities for useful- 
ness, and are occupied with laying up treasures 
in heaven. A Christian need not be at all con- 
cerned about the time of his death. Indeed, he 
knows that he could not of himself make an 
appointment with death. He could not say, 
"Thirty years from this day, at noon, will I go 
with thee, Death, to the land beyond the grave. " 
He does not know but that at that very hour 
there may be more reason for his living than 
there has ever been before. He might in a week 
then do more for himself and for the world than 
he is able to do in a year now. 

Indeed, I cannot conceive how any man can ever 
be ready to die, in the sense of having nothing 
more to do. An active man is always enlarging 
his field and widening his work, and when called 
away there seem to be more things for him to 
do than ever before. He that is most fit to live 
is in this sense least ready to die ; and he that is 
most fit to die is the readiest man for all that is 
wholesomely active in good living. 

It is the comfort of Christain faith that we do 
not die to ourselves, that it is not a question of 
personal convenience with us. Let us thank 
God that the responsibility of the two surpass- 
ingly grave questions of the time of our birth 
and the time of our death is not devolved on us. 
We have been born, and that is accomplished. * 
We shall die sometime, and that will be accom- 
plished with just as little influence and respon- 
sibility on our parts. 

I can understand how a man who has no faith 
in Christ should be anxious about the time of 
his death and wish to live on indefinitely. He 
has no hope beyond the grave. He is striving 
to live for himself. But a Christian lives to the 
Lord. He would not wish to live one minute 
beyond the time when his earthly existence 
should cease to promote the glory of his Lord. 
And he knows that he shall not; that the very 
instant his work is done he will be removed. 
When " we die we die unto the Lord." 
(2.) We have no choice as to the place. 
In the human heart and in human history 
there are two opposing forces. One is conserva- 
tive, and makes us love to stay at home ; the 
other is progressive, and leads us out in the hope 



In Memoricum : Dr. 



JVathanael W. Seat. 



that we shall be led tip. How we desire to cling 
to our homes and yet cannot ! There is not a 
man in Christendom whose heart does not re- 
spond tenderly to the sentiment of the air and 
words of the song, "Home, Sweet Home," a 
song that was written by a man who never had a 
home and who died a wanderer. It has occurred 
to me that the pathos of that song lies in the 
fact that almost no one has a home. To most 
men it is an ideal. It is what they should love to 
have. A very few do have it ! just enough to 
give to the idea of home some form and pressure. 

In this large congregation I venture the asser- 
tion that it is probable you could not find a hun- 
dred people who live in houses owned by them- 
selves, and not two hundred more who even live 
in hired houses. The rest of us are " camping" 
in hotels and boarding-houses. And I venture 
to say that there are not three people in this as- 
sembly who are living in the houses in which 
their fathers lived, and there is not probably 
one of us who will die in the house in which he 
was born. 

As what is called " civilization" advances, 
more and more we wander. We cannot tell 
where we shall be next year. Civilization makes 
less room at home. It presses men out. It 
makes demands which can be satisfied only from 
without. As Christains come to have larger 
views of their duties to the race the more are they 
drawn from cosy retreats and soft nests out to 
work among their fellow-men in all parts of the 
world. And it is a trait of men and birds that 
they do not like to go back to the old cold nests. 
We cannot prepare a soft bed for our hour of 
dying, and say, " I will come back and lay me 
here, and close my life amid the scenes that have 
been dear to me." While we are gone they 
may destroy the place, as while the Emperor 
of France has been absent from Paris they have 
burnt the Tuileries, the magnificent palace in 
which he was born. 

But how immaterial are such considerations 
to a Christain ! He is to be nowhere that duty 
does not call. He must be where duty does call. 
He is not to consider how near that brings him 
to the death hour. The Lord regulates that. 
Standing in his place at all times, he will be in 
his place when the stroke of death shall come. 
It may be on the Mount with Moses, gazing from 
Pisgah over the Promised Land. It may be at the 
Rich Man's door with Lazarus, gazing at dogs 
and vermin. It will be just where it ought to 
be. Where "we die, we die unto the Lord." 

(3.) We have no choice as to the manner. 

According to a man's temperament will be his 



preferences in all things, even in the matter of 
dying, as to its place and method. 

Some would prefer a long season of lingering 
disease, as calculated to loosen the cords of life 
and let them away more easily. 

Others would desire brief notice, that there 
might be brief suspense. 

Generally there seems to be a desire that 
death might not be instant. Thousands have 
repeated the petition of the Episcopal Prayer 
Book, "From sudden death, good Lord deliver 
us." Is it a good prayer? To a Christian is 
sudden death a thing so undesirable that it 
should be classed with pestilence, famine, battle, 
and murder, as it is in the Litany? Is it more 
desirable to feel one's powers wasting through 
long years, the old ties loosening, office by office 
vacated, one association after another dissolved, 
until our life becomes a weariness to ourselves 
and a burden to others? 

For my own part I have long thought and 
often said that I should prefer to live fully, in 
perfect play of all my powers, and busier than 
ever ; ready to go but quite as ready to stay, and 
then, in a moment leap the narrow dividing 
stream from the banks of this island of mortal 
life to the banks of the continent of the life ever- 
lasting. To a Christian in full power it must be 
glorious to have the lightning flash fling the 
doors of immortality open. And yet it is not 
becoming that you and I should be fondly 
dwelling on such pictures. 

It may be that God intends us to long racking 
pain that we may be made perfect through 
suffering, that we may be monumental of that 
divine grace which is sufficient for us. He may 
assemble about our beds crowds of great and 
small, because there is some lesson which our 
death shall have special power to teach. Per- 
haps He will cut us off so that none of our most 
intimate friends shall know anything about our 
latter end, as when men fall in the melee of 
battle and are hurriedly buried in trenches 
crowded with unrecognized corpses, or, drop 
overboard at sea, or are lost in African explora- 
tions ; in which cases the lives of the departed 
stand out sharply cut and without the shadow of 
death. Of friends who have so gone we have 
recollections simply of their lives when those 
lives were full of life. The last time seen those 
friends were in the usual business of their posi- 
tion, jocund and gay, or strong and full. There 
is no memory of weakness connected with such 
a life. 

But the choice, thank God, is not with us. 
"Whether we live, we live unto the Lord; or 



176 



In Memoriam : Dr. 



JVathanael W. Seat. 



whether we die, we die unto the Lord." We 
have this assurance that the very moment in 
which any Christian's life shall close will be that 
which shall give his whole earthly existence its 
greatest capability of benefitting the race and 
promoting among men the knowledge of the 
Lord our Saviour. No Christian can desire 
more. Every Christian is sure that he shall 
not have less. "No man dieth unto himself." 
Not by himself, not for himself, not to himself. 
The Christian dies " unto the Lord." His death 
consecrates his whole life with all its influence to 
the Lord whom he has served. He leaves that 
life and that influence to work for his Lord when 
he has gone, and then he goes to be "forever 
with the Lord," enjoying the double immortality 
of perpetual influence on earth and everlasting 
work and happiness in heaven. 

" Forever with the Lord ! 
Amen ! so let it be ! 
Life from the dead is in that word; 
'Tis immortality \ " 

I have been led into this train of thought 
because, having been requested by the Monthly 
Meeting of this church to deliver a Memorial 
Discourse of Nathanael W. Seat, M.D., I have set 
apart this morning for that service : and his life 
and his death seemed to me to make illustrations of 
this text and the thoughts into which it has led me. 

Dr. Seat was born in Tennessee, within six 
miles of Nashville, in the year 1811. His 
friend, Samuel Watson, D.D., now of Memphis, 
was born within a mile of Dr. Seat's father's. 
The two boys grew up together and were fast 
friends until Dr. Seat died. At fifteen years of 
age our friend made a profession of faith and 
became a member of the Methodist Church, in 
which' his father was a class-leader, as he after- 
wards became. I am not informed at what 
college he graduated, but he was a regularly 
educated man, and in early life entered on the 
practice of medicine, in which he was eminently 
successful. 

About thirty years ago he discovered a remark- 
able cure for fevers, and with the generous un- 
selfishness of his nature, he took a wagon and 
travelled through the South, going from planta- 
tion to plantation, curing whites and blacks, and 
failing to find a case, it is said, which his remedy 
could not cure. Some years ago the French 
Government sent to this country to ascertain 
whether there had ever been discovered a method 
of curing fevers without quinine. Senator 
Reeves, of Tennessee, who knew Dr. Seat, sent 
for him, and he was requested to go to Paris 



with his method. He spent more than two 
years in the French hospitals and six months in 
these of Italy, and the official reports published 
in France show that his success abroad was quite 
equal to that he had had at home. 

There were some difficulties in securing for 
his method that kind of recognition which he 
believed it deserved. He came back to America 
with the intention of speedily returning to France 
to accomplish his purpose. The civil war in 
this country postponed that return. Two years 
after its close he was preparing to accompany his 
brother, the Rev. Dr. Seat, to Europe when his 
health began to fail. He never rallied sufficiently 
to carry out his design. In 1869 he spent the 
winter in Florida, hoping for restoration from 
its climate. In 1870 he went again to Florida, 
never to return. He constantly declined, and on 
the 3d of February, 1871, his sufferings ceased 
and he peacefully entered into his rest. 

My first knowledge of Dr. Seat was in the 
summer of 1866. We became acquainted on 
the day I preached my first sermon in the small 
chapel of the University. He was one of the 
sixteen who constituted that first congregation. 
His brother, the Rev. Dr. Seat of Texas, and 
his intimate friend, Rev. Dr. Watson of Tennes- 
see, had been my friends for years. He had heard 
of me through them, and when he saw the an- 
nouncement that I was to preach he came to 
hear me. Then our friendship began. 

The labors of the pulpit on Sunday and the 
exacting engagements of journalism during the 
week soon began to tell on me, and certain finan- 
cial embarrassments were added to the loads I 
seemed called to carry. With a tenderness like 
a woman's and a brave manly heart the good 
doctor watched over me, always seeing me after 
the service, frequently calling at my lodgings, 
and sometimes climbing into the editorial office 
in Nassau Street, bringing medicine, advice, and 
what I most needed, a hearty manly friendship 
which cheered me. 

I mention these things that you may know 
why I feel such a regard for his memory, and 
why when my embarrassments were relieved and 
health came back, my heart always turned so 
toward him who in dark hours had been my 
"friend, philosopher, and guide." And I men- 
tion it that you may know my opportunities of 
being acquainted with the character of the man. 
He was my pastor before I became his. He 
brought the consolation of the faith of the gospel 
warmly and closely home to my heart, with such 
simplicity and directness as made me feel that he 
was not a mere formal church member but a 



In Memoriam: Dr. JVathanael W. Seat. 



177 



disciple whose heart was devoted to the Mas- 
ter. 

Then his time came. His delicate constitu- 
tion succumbed to the heaviness of his profes- 
sional burdens. He began to decline. As often 
as practicable I saw him while he remained in 
the city. It was a privilege to be with him. 
There was nothing weak or peevish or gloomy 
in his temper when his flesh was failing. Al- 
though surrounded with domestic comfort he had 
many things to try him. He had made what he 
considered a great discovery in medicine, as I 
have already said ; and he was anxious to intro- 
duce it properly into the practice, and he was 
about to die with the desire of his heart unaccom- 
plished, and this through what seemed to him to 
be the carelessness or obstinacy of official persons 
in a foreign government. And yet there was no 
bitterness of spirit amid these great regrets. He 
bore all his physical sufferings uncomplainingly. 

I can unite in Rev. Dr. Watson's testimony to 
his character, when he says, "A more amiable, 
sweet-minded, and unselfish man I never knew." 
So engaging was his manner and his temper 
that one was apt to lose sight of his excellent in- 
tellectual qualities in the charms of the man's 
social conduct, until his skill was called into 
professional requisition. That he gave unstint- 
ingly. 

And here, not only of him, but of the medical 
profession generally, I wish to bear my testimony. 
Ministers of the Gospel are expected to give up 
time and talents and comforts for the public ; and 
they do. But our brethren of the Healing Art 
also go at all hours of the day and night, amid 
all the perils of disease, to render gratuitous ser- 



vice, and no other men have such an opportu- 
nity as the clergy to see how noble are the sacri- 
fices of the physicians. 

Dr. Seat in this particular was an honor tc 
his profession. In him the poor lost not simply 
a healer but a helper. 

He died away from all he loved. His brother 
was in Europe. His wife had been compelled to 
come to New York. And he grew worse so rap- 
idly, at a time when communication with his 
retreat was cut off, that she could not reach him. 
In a remote spot in Florida, difficult of access, 
all his connections with the outer world broken, 
this man, who had stood before princes, who had 
walked the wards of hospitals like an angel, who 
had mingled with accomplished men and women, 
who had lived much in crowded cities, died 
almost alone. This man, so remarkable for his 
affectionateness, died without a love-word, or a 
love-look, or a love-grasp. 

But let us be assured, beloved, that he did not 
die to himself, that he died unto the Lord, and 
that the time and place and manner of his de- 
parture were all so ordered as to give his entire 
life its very best impression upon the world. 

Let us live and work in that faith. It will 
make our work better. We shall then have no 
wastage. We shall not, then, let any portion 
of our life ravel out. Death, then, shall not 
be a fracture of life's mirror, but the frame that 
holds and helps and finishes life's picture. 

To die unto one's self would be to lose life down 
a deep, narrow well. 

To die unto the Lord is to lift life up to the 
sublimest heights, and let it loose to take sub- 
limest flights. " We are the Lord's." 



XXIX. 



4 'FOR OUR LIGHT AFFLICTION, WHICH IS EUT FOR A MOMENT, WORKETH FOR US A FAR 
MORE EXCEEDING AND ETERNAL WEIGHT OF GLORY [OR, WORKETH FOR US EXCEEDINGLY 
ABUNDANTLY AN ETERNAL WEIGHT OF GLORY] ; WHILE WE LOOK NOT AT THE THINGS 
WHICH ARE SEEN, BUT AT THE THINGS WHICH ARE NOT SEEN : FOR THE THINGS WHICH 
ARE SEEN ARE TEMPORAL [OR, TEMPORARY] ; BUT THE THINGS WHICH ARE NOT SEEN ARE 
ETERNAL."— -2 CORINTHIANS, IV. 1 7, 1 8. 



These words of the Apostle imply a double 
contrast, and a connection. 

i. The first contrast. 

It is between the two categories into which all 
things in the universe fall, the seen and the un- 
seen. Whatsoever is "seen" is not among the 
invisible things. Whatsoever is " not seen" is 
not among the visible things. And, there is no 
third class of things. 

By "the things which are seen" must be 
meant those created things of which we have 
knowledge through our senses; not simply 
through our sense of sight, but through hearing, 
smell, taste, and touch as well. They are those 
things which can touch some portion of our 
bodies or souls, and thus report themselves 
to us, in distinction from ideas and ideals. 
They are material substances and spiritual sub- 
stances in distinction from those realities which 
are independent of both material and spiritual 
substances. Music, which seems so ethereal, is ot 
"the things which are seen," because we could 
have no idea of it without the sense of hearing. 

"The things which are not seen" are not 
vague unrealities. They are more real than the 
visible things. They cause the visible things. 
Matter, which is visible, is the product of force, 
which is invisible ; but force is as real as matter. 
Force was before matter and will be after it. 
Force can exist without matter ; but matter can- 
not exist without force. 

The splendid array of suns and stars and plan- 
ets and satellites, battalions clad in mail of light 
and marching in grand review before the august 
eyes of God, are things which are seen. We 
can gaze upon the stately constitution of the 
stellar heavens. But we cannot see that mighty 
force of gravitation which holds all these ponder- 
ous globes to orbits of order and makes the 
music to which they march across the parade- 
grounds of the universe. But that unseen grav- 



itation is not only real ; it is greater than eacn 
world ; it is greater than all the worlds together ; 
for, if it were not, the worlds would drop from 
its unnerved grasp adown abysmal chasms into 
all ruin and all night. 

' ' Acts are not the only real things. Principles 
are just as real. The act is " seen," the principle 
is " not seen." There would be no grand heroic 
acts if there were no grand heroic principles. 

The most real thing that is, is God : and Him 
hath no man ever seen, and Him no man can 
ever see. 

And yet how thoroughly has the ostrich sen- 
timent taken hold of us, that there is nothing 
which we cannot see; or if there be, it is hardly 
to be taken into human account, because it can 
give us no bodily touch and therefore no bodily 
pleasure or pain. 

This is one great error. Another is to under- 
value the things which are seen. 

Men sometimes suppose that they grow holier 
as they increase in their contempt for all good 
things which God has made for the use of men 
through their senses. They abstain from what 
is pleasant to the palate, the nostrils, the eye, 
the ear, and the touch. This is the origin of 
ascetism. This is the cause of those rigors and 
castigations of the body by which men have 
hoped to purify their souls. It is one of the 
oldest of the errors that evil resides in matter 
and matter is to be by all means subdued. There 
is not a particle of truth in it. We glorify God 
by our highest possible enjoyment of all the 
things which are seen. That highest possible 
enjoyment can be secured only in temperance 
continence, and self-control, by looking at the 
things which are not seen, not in crushing out 
the appetite and not in ignoring the existence 
of that which gratifies. 

Which more glorifies the fatherliness of the 
Heavenly Father, that poor, thin, weak, spirit- 



The Seen and the Unseen. 



179 



less, useless monk, who on stone floors keeps 
vigils through the night and goes about all day 
like a ghost of dead manhood, unnerved, sore, 
his thin skin rubbed between his ribs and the 
rope which girdles his gown — or that wholesome 
Christian, who sleeps on a good bed, wakes for 
his bath, his careful toilette, his fresh linen, and 
his savory breakfast ; thanks God and eats, eats 
and thanks God ; goes down to his business mus- 
cular, shrewd, strong; does great brain-work, 
manages large business affairs, keeps hundreds 
of men employed all the week and puts bread 
into a thousand mouths, and returns to his well- 
masticated and well-digested meals, and walks 
his evening round of charity, and throws his soul 
and money into the great operations by which 
the gospel of the Son of God is made to take 
its leavening hold on the mass of humanity; — 
tell me ; which of these men is the most pleas- 
ant spectacle to God and the most profitable 
example to man ? 

But on the other hand, what a spectacle to 
God and angels and men is that man who 
never sees "the things which are not seen," and 
has become so engrossed in the visible things 
that he is a heedless, hard-hearted, griping, un- 
unscrupulous tradesman, or a bloated wine-skin, 
or an overgrown hog ! The equipoise of our 
minds and the balance of our lives require that 
while we are using this world as not abusing it, 
we should also be looking at the things which are 
not seen. 

Let us consider this contrast by which each 
heightens the effect of the other. 

(i.) Of the things which are seen some are 
pleasant ; yes, very many are pleasant. 

Food, good raiment, houses, furniture, music, 
painting, statuary, horses, and whatever money 
can buy — these things really give pleasure, and, 
if not used in excess, great pleasure. Then, 
there is fame. Then, there is a life of fine ac- 
tivity. A man who has much of all these has a 
pleasant life. 

And yet these pleasant things do not satisfy us. 

Does the eye ever become full ? 

A man may travel the world over, and see all 
landscapes from the bare arctic icebergs under 
the weird sheen of the aurora, to the exuberant 
flora of the South under the glowing sun of the 
tropics, and behold all places made historic by 
great deeds and great men, or touched into ro- 
mantic splendor by the wand of genius ; and 
then he may see any curious product of human 
skill, and all the wonderful things which artists 
of all ages have wrought into canvas or marble ; 
and then make all chemical changes and see the 



results of all known appliances of mechanical 
powers; and then gaze on what is more charm- 
ing than sky or sea or mount, the faces of all 
beautiful women and lovely children, faces starry 
as the night, dewy as the morn, and radiant as 
the noonday : will ever his eye say, ' ' Come, 
blindness, corne and seal me up now, for I am 
full of all beautiful things !" Never. The eye 
is like the stomach, sated for a season, but with 
the assurance that at the very moment of reple- 
tion the hunger begins to return. 

The same is true of the ear. 

Fill it with all music of harp and viol and 
organ, of stringed and wind instruments, and 
voices of singing men and singing women. 
Pour upon it the strains of eloquence. Pour in 
all love sounds, vows and sweet cooings of a 
wooing heart, until the ear cries, with the lover 
in the Canticle, " Stay me with flagons, comfort 
me with apples, for I am sick of love." But it 
will not call deafness to seal it up, feeling that 
it will never desire to hear again. It is merely 
sated. It is not satisfied. 

Put at the command of any immortal soul 
any number of millions of dollars. It may buy 
and buy and buy everything that necessity, 
fancy, or whim may suggest, until it owns some- 
thing of every kind of things, and the best of 
each kind, and all the best of each kind it may 
desire, and yet there will be a sense of incom- 
pleteness and dissatisfaction. This shows that 
the pleasant things which are seen are not satis- 
fying. 

On the other hand, the unpleasant cannot 
destroy. 

There is a limit on the other side. There is 
a point where cold ceases to pinch painfully and 
superinduces a quiet state like that drowze into 
which children fall on hot afternoons. In such 
a state a man lies down in Siberian snow 
as warm and as comfortable as if between beds 
of eider down. The power of the cold has 
reached its limit. Pain may attack a man 
through his nerves, and wrench him with all the 
ingenious instruments of neuralgia and rheuma- 
tism and gout. The rack and the rope may be 
used to torture him. He may be tied in a sack 
and flung into the sea. You can approach only 
so near. The real man is not in the body. 
The manhood is a kingly thing and in the soul. 
Pain may come to a certain nearness and then 
pain is paralyzed. The drowning man stran- 
gles and struggles for a moment, and then sees 
all his life before him, not as a moving pano- 
rama, but all present at once, and then comes 
the sensation of soft rest on soft couches or in 



180 



The Seen and the Unseen. 



soft arms. The man who is swung off on a gal- 
lows at first beholds splendid fire-works, and 
then dies to strains of music. Even fire burns 
down the telegraph, so that its bad intelligence 
ceases to be transmitted to the soul, and the 
martyr stands on live coals as one who treads on 
leaves of roses. 

If the good of the things which are seen can- 
not satisfy, the bad cannot destroy. 

And both are soon past. 

For how short a time we use these instru- 
ments of the body ! Even if life be continued 
to a great length, in old age the hearing, the 
sight, the other faculties become thick, heavy, 
often embarrassing from their increasing defects. 
But if a man's sight should not grow dim nor 
his natural force be abated, and. he should live a 
score of years beyond the time when men are 
considered very old, how short a time is that ! 

It is the future that is long. The past is not. 
You who are a half century old feel now as if it 
would require a long arm to reach forward to 
the death-hour, if that hour be even so near as 
three score and ten ; but your earliest childhood 
seems to lie at your feet, so that you could almost 
stoop down and touch it. Whenever called 
away, to each of us his life will be as a dream is 
to the dreamer when he awakes. "The things 
which are seen are temporary." 

With all these, the characteristics of the un- 
seen stand in sharp contrast. 

The good satisfies. 

A man's actions are among the things that 
are seen, his principles among the things which 
are not seen. However industrious may have 
been a man's life, at the close, and indeed all 
through it, he has his satisfaction, not in the 
greatness of the deed but in the greatness of the 
doing, not in what was done but in the why he 
did it. The deed may shine afar and seem a 
work of conspicuous splendor to the world, and 
the doer may know that he did it basely from 
bad motives, and it gives him no comfort; but 
when a man has done what all who think of it 
regard as quite a failure, and has done it for 
lofty motives, his conscious heroism will be a 
satisfaction as long as he has any memory. 

Some of you boys last week, or at some time, 
had a huge temptation, a very strong inclination 
to do what you knew to be bad, perhaps to tread 
down the nobility of your soul by a lie. And 
you were a long time in the trouble. But you 
conquered. You said, "No, I will not lie; I 
will not try to escape from this trouble by a sin; 
I will tell the truth and shame the devil." And 
you did; it was not easy to do, my son, but 



you did it, thank God. All feasts and shows 
and indulgences of yourself may pass from your 
memory, but the holding to truth is perfectly 
satisfactory now, is it not ? It is, and it will be 
forever. A million of years from this you will 
have greater satisfaction in the memory of that 
triumph than in all the pleasures your body 
ever enjoyed. 

On the other hand, the bad destroys. 

While the evil of the things that are seen 
touches only the body, the evil of the things 
that are not seen touches the soul. There is 
where the real manhood is. A man's soul in 
its integrity, unbroken, unweakened, unstained, 
is the grandest thing the great God has to look 
upon. The diseases of the soul, the attacks 
which tend to destroy it, are from the evils of 
the unseen things, — falsehood, cowardice, faith- 
lessness, rebellion against God, disorders which 
the eye can never see, discords which the ear 
Ban never hear ; these eat the soul as a cancer. 
It is not the loss of property that hurts the soul ; 
but the wrong done in a trade is a secret and 
untiring memory that wears the man out. 
" The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity, 
but a wounded spirit who can bear?" It is not 
weapons made of steel that can pierce and in- 
jure a man. Whatever may be his circum- 
stances, whatever the infirmities of his flesh, so 
long as the man's soul is intact he can keep 
back a sea of troubles. But who can bear a 
wounded spirit? That which wounds the soul is 
unseen. 

And, BOTH ARE ENDLESS. 

" The things which are not seen are eternal," 
whether they are good or bad. They are not 
affected by the qualities or accidents of matter. 
The tongue that utters a bad word and the ear 
that hears it pass away, but the filthiness or fal- 
sity is wrought into the immortal fabric of the 
soul that receives it and that loves to receive it. 
The outward act passes as a ship through waves 
which are troubled into foam for a season by its 
passage, but which soon swallow all traces of its 
track; but the principle of the act continues 
forever, as the power of steam and the force ot 
gravitation do not vary with the changing rela- 
tive positions of objects. 

2. THE SECOND CONTRAST. 

This much in general the Apostle says in 
regard to the contrast between things visible and 
things invisible ; and then, beyond, he makes a 
contrast in a special manner between "afflic- 
tion" and " glory." 

On the one side he sets the affliction which 
befalls men generally in human life, the ills that 



The Seen and the Unseen. 



181 



flesh is heir to, the troubles which come to the 
good and the bad, the sorrows which fall equally 
to the just and the unjust in the usual working 
of the social machinery of humanity. 

To them he adds what befalls a man because 
he is a Christian. 

There are always special troubles attending 
the efforts to be holy. It is very hard to be a 
sinner, but it is not easy to be a Christian. We 
would better look at facts as they are. We are 
not to "be carried to the skies on flowery beds 
cf ease." We shall have fightings without and 
fears within. Devotion to Jesus never was an 
exemption from trouble. Every saint has diffi- 
culties to which a sinner must always be a 
stranger. There is a special pathetic emphasis 
in St. Paul's phrase "our affliction." 

But, when he has set all that dark pile before 
him, he puts in contrast with it the "glory" into 
which every true Christian life is to be developed; 
the glory of the spiritual, incorruptible, undecay- 
ing body which the Christian has to wear; the 
glory of the intellectual advancement he is to 
make ; the glory of the spiritual discoveries he is 
to enjoy ; the glory of the completed, rounded, 
purified, and exalted character which is to be his ; 
the glory of the splendid career amid splendid 
surroundings which he is to achieve in the 
boundless cycles of eternity, in the measureless 
spaces of eternity, growing and glowing, happy, 
superb, and influential, transfused with the glory 
of God and streaming that glory on all around 
him. 

The Apostle saw the Christian bound from the 
disgrace of sickness to the glory of health, from 
the degradation of ignorance to the glory of 
knowledge, from the belittling employment of 
earth to the divinely glorious occupation of 
heaven, from the ignominy of death to the glory 
of the life everlasting. 

He beheld as if a mighty angel were weighing. 
In one scale was put the Christian's "affliction." 
It seemed heavy. Down went that arm of the 
balance. Into the other scale began to come the 
" glory," and up went affliction's scale as if it held 
a feather ; and yet but a portion of the glory 
had come in : the scale was too small to hold it ! 

He saw the angel measure them as to dura- 
tion. "Affliction" seemed so long ! The meas- 
ure was taken of a Christian's "affliction." 

It was a martyr in the arena, torn by the lions, 
still living and quivering and in conscious agony, 
and yet the hold on life was so strong and death 
seemed to linger until the minutes drew them- 
selves into ages, and the maiden dying for her 
faith felt as if her life were gray with centuries. 



It was the hunted saint, wandering from cave 
to cave, life worn out under persecutions, the 
monotony of misery broken only by an occa- 
sional martyrdom of a friend, and the soul of the 
sorrowful saint went plaintively crying, " How 
long, O Lord, how long?" 

It was the spirit of a Christian parent mourn- 
ing over a rebellious Absalom, longing for the 
return of the prodigal son, praying day and 
night with tears for the conversion of the wicked 
child, the days dragging slowly and the 
"affliction" seeming so long! 

The Apostle saw this affliction lifted and, in 
the ages of eternity, laid beside the "glory" that 
is " eternal :" and how the affliction shortened ! 

A saint in "glory," whose life on earth had 
appeared to him to be so long, goes up the avenues 
of Paradise, walks the golden streets of the New 
Jerusalem, mingles with the patriarchs, pene- 
trates the recesses of eternity, and from some dis- 
tant point looks back upon his prison and his 
chains, in that career which seemed to him so 
long, and now it has shrank to a mere point of 
time, and he exclaims, "'It was but for a mo- 
ment!" O, now, fiow heaven outweighs earth 
and outstretches life. The "affliction" which is 
"light" and "but for a moment" is so surpassed 
by the "glory," by the "weight" of glory which 
is "eternal !" 

This is the double contrast. 

Now there is a CONNECTION between these. 

The affliction may be made to bear upon the 
glory ; nay, it may be made to produce the glory. 
There does not naturally or logically seem to be 
any connection between affliction and glory : 
quite the contrary. To most men the one does 
not produce the other. But the Apostle teaches 
that to a Christian glory may really be the prod- 
uct of affliction, and he shows us how this m^y 
be accomplished in our individual experience. 

We cannot avoid the affliction. There is no 
exemption. But there are two relations to 
affliction, either of which we may sustain. Afflic- 
tion may be our master : or, it may be our slave. 
A man may sit down glumly under his troubles, 
roll and writhe under them, grow more and 
more a fatalist, until he begins to curse life and 
providence and God. His affliction has got the 
upper hand. The sufferer is under, and is op- 
pressed. That is always the result of looking at 
the things which are seen. . While a man studies 
only his body, his material surroundings, and 
connections, this limited life of mortality, earth 
and its phenomena, all the troubles of this pres- 
ent life magnify themselves. They not only 
seem to increase, but they harass and injure 



182 



The Seen and the Unseen. 



and belittle the sufferer. Every man grows 
smaller or larger, meaner or grander, from his 
afflictions. The result depends upon whether 
he looks at the things which are seen or at the 
things which are not seen. 

Of Christians Paul says, " We look at the 
things which are not seen." This is only a seem- 
ing paradox. The word "look" is used in its 
metaphysical sense, and the phrase " not seen" 
in its physical sense. 

There are things which can be seen to the 
eyes of the spiritual body which are not visible 
to the material body. With the latter we behold 
the landscapes of the earth. But heaven has 
its landscapes. Heaven must be somewhere 
beyond the fancies of prophets and poets. The 
human soul is something. It is not a nonentity. 
It is not a mere idea. It is not a bodiless 
vagary. It is real. It is substance. It has parts 
and dimensions. It demands a locality. It 
cannot be conceived without a locality. So of 
every spirit. They are all visible. They know 
one another. A body can be seen by a body. A 
soul can be seen by a soul. 

To Abraham and Lazarus £nd Paul heaven is 
not now among the unseen things. It is as vis- 
ible to them as earth is to us. As plainly do 
they see the tree of life beside the river as I now 
see the trees which grow beside the windows of 
this church. They see the general assembly and 
church of the first-born as plainly as I see this 
congregation. They behold Jesus in His real 
personality as plainly as I now see in that chancel 
the bread and wine which are to be our Eucha- 
ristic Feast to-day. The angels of the Lord, as 
we are taught in Holy Scripture, encamp round 
them that fear Him. In this holy house, there 
in that organ loft, there among those orphan 
children in the gallery, they have pitched their 
white tents to-day. Perhaps they crowd this 
pulpit. I cannot see them. You cannot see 
tnem. But they see one another. Your little 
girl may be among them and my little boy. 
They see one another as plainly as I saw the 
children on whom fell the waters of baptism at 
that font to-day. 

Now all these are visible things, and Paul is 
not speaking of them, of things not visible to 
us now but to be seen hereafter. He is speak- 
ing of what no man has ever seen and no man 
shall ever see ; things not visible now, and not to 
be visible ever ; things that are not phenomena 
and have not phenomena essentially, but which 
produce all the phenomena of humanity and 
of the universe : he is speaking of principles. 
And, when he says we "look at" them, he 



must be speaking metaphysically, and mean we 
contemplate them, give them, such contempla- 
tion as makes them real, such study of them as 
fills us full of sense of their potential existence, 
such a belief in them as brings them down as a 
rule on our souls and our lives. 

That this can be done the lives of all great 
men do teach us. 

Moses was a grand man. He stands now, in 
the Past, more colossal and noble than we can 
express. We feel that even Michael Angelo 
failed to put into his great marble all our sense 
of the nobility of Moses. There has seldom 
been a more afflicted life than that which fell to 
Moses. A foundling, an alien in the house of 
his adopted mother, a homicide, an exile, called 
to lead a mob of slaves out into liberty, de- 
nounced by the people he was delivering and 
civilizing, carrying such a load as never pressed 
so long. on mere mortal shoulders, and dying 
within sight of a desired land he should never 
enjoy, — his affliction wrought for him a glory 
which grows in height with the growing ages, 
and has already secured for itself the domain of 
eternity. The explanation of the connection 
between the affliction and the grandeur of that 
mighty life lies in the words of Paul concerning 
Moses. " He endured as seeing Him who is 
invisible" That made him great. 

God, right, truth, love, goodness, are "things 
not seen," and so are wrong, falsehood, hatred, 
and badness. None of these things can ever be 
seen by eyes of bodies natural or bodies spir- 
itual. 

Sight is the sense which enables us to per- 
ceive the visible. 

Faith is the sense which enables us to see the 
invisible. 

Without our bodily senses the whole visible 
world would be totally shut out from us. With- 
out faith, our spiritual sense, the whole invisible 
world of moral principles is totally shut out 
from us. 

The more we cultivate this soul-sense the 
greater we become. We must be intent on the 
study of these invisible principles if we would 
derive from them these abounding blessings. 
The word employed by the Apostle in the orig- 
inal is that which was used to designate the 
taking of an aim at a mark, the look which an 
archer in Paul's day or a sharp-shooter in ours 
gives to the target to be struck by arrow or by 
ball. You know that that is not a mere cursory 
glance. You know how fixed that is. The 
shooter shuts one eye for singleness of vision. 
He looks along the line of his rifle, not at trig- 



The Seen and the Unseen. 



ger, not at any part of the barrel, not at the 
sight-piece, but at the mark beyond. Birds 
may fly over him, beasts may run past him, but 
nothing in heaven or earth has his attention 
except the centre of the target. 

Such, dear brethren, is to be our fixed atten- 
tion to what is worth more than all sense and 
systems, moral principles. Such devotion to 
the things which are not seen, such cultivation 
of our trust in the eternal right of the right, in 
the eternal truth of the truth, in the eternal 
good of the good, and in the eternal sweetness 
of love, will do many great things for us. 

(i.) It will give us all the good there is in the 
things which are seen. The brutes do not get 
so much good from what they enjoy as we, be- 
cause they feel their joys only along the rough, 
coarse lines of the material. Man has that and 
also the fine lines of reason and the spiritual 
sensibilities. Faith is the loftiest exertion of the 
loftiest part of human nature. It is the highest 
possible enjoyment. It surpasses all others. It 
is the joy of God. God never thinks. God 
never reasons. But God does believe. 

To man, "Faith is the substance of things 
hoped for," as Paul says; to God and man 
"Faith is the evidence of things not seen." 
Neither God nor man sees love and truth and 
right ; but we believe in them. To God that 
faith gives eternal joy ; to man it gives perpetual 
enjoyment. Then the good we get, the couches 
we rest on, the horses we drive, the pictures we 
admire, the music we hear, the fragrance we 
smell, give us greater enjoyment when we rest 
on the invisible things. 

(2.) We get good out of the unpleasant things 
of life, " while we look at the things which are 
not seen." This text has endured a double pop- 
ular misquotation, in this form: "Our light 
affliction, which is but for. a moment,- shall 
work out for us a far more exceeding and 
eternal weight of glory." 

By this the results are all put into the future. 
It seems to imply that, somehow, in compensa- 
tion for our sufferings here, we shall have joy 
hereafter. And many people believe that. They 
say — I have heard it often said — " We ought to 
have a good time in eternity, we've had such a 
hard time here." That is a non sequiter. Now, 
while \ve endure them, our pains are doing their 
work, our affliction is working, not "shall 
work." 

By splitting the text another error is involved, 
namely, that affliction is of itself profitable. 
This is not true. Poverty, hunger, sickness, 
bereavement, pain, persecution, are not good in 



183 



themselves and do us no good of themselves. 
Remember that our affliction " is at work for us" 
only " while we look at the things which are 
not seen." The moment we take our intent 
gaze from the unseen things, affliction begins to 
injure, belittle, and destroy us, and our pleas- 
ures begin to pamper, spoil, and destroy us. It 
is as when the marksman loses sight of his mark. 
His gun, his shot, his powder, his strength, all 
go for nothing, or he hits the wrong thing. 

It seems to me an illustration is in our 
modern machinery as driven by steam. There 
stands all the machinery, and the fire is under 
the boiler, and the steam is ready, and yet no 
spindles are driven, no lathes are turned. But 
the moment the band which connects all the 
machinery to the power is run over the main 
wheel, everything is set instantly at work. 

So you, beloved, may have troubles and get 
no good from them. Your child dies ; it goes 
down, with all its sweet and winning ways, into 
the grave, and they fill dull earth between your 
anguished heart and your darling. How shall 
you endure it? You go back to your home. 
You take the little fellow's bat and ball, and 
top and book, and all his little playthings, and 
touch them in fond agony. You gaze into the 
empty cradle of your baby-girl, and passion- 
ately kiss the little dent in the pillow made by 
her precious head ; and her doll and her 
scraps nearly break your heart. You are look- 
ing at the " things that are seen." Your afflic- 
tion is making bitterness and shame for you. 
Look up at the unseen things. Look at God's 
love, God's truth, God's righteousness. Look 
at them, and your affliction will every mo- 
ment be working for you a glory ; it shall be 
making you the glorious parent of a glorious 
child. 

And this is just as true for you whose little 
flock not yet has lost a lamb, but who have had 
business troubles, failures, embarrassments, un- 
requited love, and any other affliction known to 
mortals. Just so long as you look upon the 
money you have lost, the property you failed to 
purchase which has since risen so greatly in 
value, or the lies men have told on you, or your 
manifold failures, your troubles are injurious. 
But a firm faith in the principles on which 
God forms the universe will glorify you, but 
making Affliction your slave. 

" How shalt thou bear the cross that now 
So dread a weight appears ? 
Keep quietly to God, and think 
Upon the Eternal Yeaxs^ 



The Seen and the Unseen. 



And knowest thou not how bitterness 

An ailing spirit cheers ? 
Thy medicine is the strengthening thought 

Of the Eternal Years. 

One cross can sanctify a soul. 

Late saints and ancient seers 
Were what they were because they mused 

Upon the Eternal Years. 

Death will have rainbows round it seen 
Through calm contrition's tears, 

If tranquil hope but trim her lamp 
At the Eternal Years." 

(3.) It is thus that our afflictions develop the 
heroic element of our nature. Cowards are 
those who are always at the mercy of appari- 
tions. Heroes are those who walk through 
shadows up to objects that are real. All visible 
things are passing away. The physical universe 
is, we know. Perhaps the spiritual world has 
changes. Perhaps Abel has seen changes in 
the outlines of celestial landscapes since he first 
beheld them. The heavenly mountains may by 
attrition be deposited in heavenly seas. We are 
taught that our spiritual bodies change. " From 
glory to glory" are we changed. But right and 
truth and goodness and love are changeless. 

The man who believes that the things which 
are seen are the most* important drivels pitiably 
and is a slave to his circumstances. 

How constantly in common life are we fur- 
nished with exemplifications of our text ! 

One occurred in Pennsylvania last week, when 
the av rice of the owners of the coal-mine at 
Pittston burned so many men to death. Those 
rich monopolists looked only at the money they 
could save and not at the right. They regarded 
"the things which are seen," and now justly 
merit to be covered with ignominy. In contrast 
with these wretched men stands a poor boy, 
who down in the horrid darkness of the mine 
performed a deed whose splendor shall stream 
through eternity. Martin Cooney is his name. 
He was a poor lad, unlearned, a worker in the 
dark mines When the catastrophe befell the 



mine, Cooney and his companion stood at the 
bottom of the shaft as the car was about to 
ascend for the last time. High above them 
roaring flame and blinding smoke and the crash 
of falling timbers were fast closing up the narrow 
way to light and life ; below them in the gloomy 
pit were a score of men working on, unconscious 
of their deadly peril. Cooney, with one foot on 
the car, thought of his endangered friends. He 
proposed to his companion that they should 
return and warn the miners of their threatened 
fate. His companion refused to go, and then 
Cooney, without a moment's hesitation, but with 
full consciousness that he had chosen almost 
certain death, leaped from the car and groped 
his way back through the grimy darkness. It was 
too late ; the miners had closed the ventilating 
door before he reached them. There he stood, 
between the shaft and barrierwhich his little hands 
could not remove. The hot breath of the fiery 
rjit poured in on him in a pitiless blast. And 
so he stood, and so he died. There, hundreds 
of feet from the sunlight; there, where his 
father and mother could not hear him ; there, 
where no one was to praise or protect him ; there, 
in the heart of darkness, he gazed at the things 
which are not seen, gazed right into the dark, 
while his eyes snapped in the hot ait and his 
throat strangled in the thick smoke, his brief 
affliction wrought, wrought fast, wrought hard, 
wrought well, and put the poor boy up, among 
the heroes, under a weight of glory. 

O brethren, so it shall always be. The real 
things are the unseen. But the things that are 
seen can be so afflictive. Blessed be God that 
He has taught us how to grasp the goblet of suf- 
fering and so drink it that each drop of poison 
shall be transmitted into an elixir of everlasting 
life ! Blessed be God that He has taught us 
how to change every spike in the thorn-crown of 
sorrow into an aureole of glory. Blessed be 
God for the things that are seen and foi the 
things that are unseen. And, blessed be God, 
that while the things which are seen are tem- 
porary, the things which are not seen are eternal! 



XXX. 

"WHY TROUBLE YE HER? SHE HATH WROUGHT A GOOD [a BEAUTIFUL] WORK ON ME. SHE 
HATH DONE WHAT SHE COULD."— MARK, XIV. 6, 8. 



It was Tuesday evening in Bethany. 

Bethany lay east of Jerusalem, with the Mount 
of Olives between. 

It was a quiet little town in which Lazarus re- 
sided with his sisters, Martha and Mary. They 
had a relative named Simon, who had had the 
leprosy and probably been healed by Jesus ; and 
his house was in Bethany. 

It was the last week in the life of our Lord. 
He spent His days in Jerusalem, in the heat of a 
terrible conflict with the church-party who were 
finally to slay Him. But He did not trust Him- 
self a single night in the metropolis. He went 
over to Bethany for its quiet and for its pure 
friendship. Here were those who really and 
truly loved Him. Here was tranquillity. 

On this evening it seemed to come into the 
heart of Simon to give tokens of his gratitude by 
a supper to Jesus. Our dear Lord was never so 
engrossed with His lofty mission and personal 
sufferings as not to be ready to attend to the 
courtesies of life. He went to the supper, and 
sat with Simon, whom probably he had healed of 
leprosy, and Lazarus, whom certainly He had 
raised from the dead. 

He came in flushed from the excitement of the 
day. He had paused with His disciples on the 
Mount of Olives, and delivered his powerful and 
graphic prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem 
and of the final judgment. Either Simon's 
house and Lazarus's was the same, or they were 
very near, as the village was small, and the two 
families were intimate, as we find the whole 
family of Lazarus in the house of Simon. 

Lazarus was there to partake of the entertain- 
ment. 

Martha was there, still a busy, bustling, good 
housewife, not having gathered from the speech 
the Lord had made to her about being careful 
of many things, that she should relax her in- 
dustry or forget her skill, but not now jealous 
of Mary's sweet monopoly of the Lord. " And 
Martha served." This is John's announcement 
of her presence. 

Mary had what seems to have been regarded 



as a treasure by her, to be kept for some special 
occasion which had never yet come. It was a 
treasure. Pliny tells us that the ointment of 
nard was a costly luxury. The plant grew in 
southern India, but the ointment was brought 
chiefly from Asia Minor in little flasks of ala- 
baster. It was sold at a high price. We learn 
from this narrative that the flask which belonged 
to Mary was worth about sixty dollars of our 
money, and we must recollect that sixty dollars 
in the days of Jesus would purchase more than 
can be bought with six hundred dollars now. 
It represented, perhaps, all the savings of Mary's 
life. 

After the meal had begun, while Jesus reclined 
at the table, Mary came in quietly and opened 
the flask, and noiselessly poured the ointment 
on the head of her friend. She had watched 
with loving eyes the agony of His soul, His 
harrassed look as he returned from his daily 
conflicts in Jerusalem. She naturally desired 
to make some marked and significant display 
of her love. On that aching head she poured 
the nard. There, stretched from the couch, 
were the swollen, throbbing feet that had been 
standing in the Temple during the day, and 
bringing Him across Olivet in the evening. 
She recollected that they had stood beside her 
brother's grave. Now, there sat that brother, 
alive, well, and eating, Her heart went out in 
all lovingness. She spent the remainder of the 
ointment on His feet, then threw the flask away, 
and wrapped the dear limbs in her hair, not to 
remove the ointment from the feet, but to catch 
it back into her tresses, as if the touch of the 
feet of Jesus had heightened the aroma of the 
nard, and made it a sweeter ointment for a 
woman's head. 

So silently and unobtrusively had she done this, 
that it was only when the house was filled with 
the odor of the ointment that the disciples per- 
ceived what had been done, although Jesus 
from the first knew that it was Mary, and what 
she was doing. 

There was one dark spirit at the feast, who 



186 



Mary : Religion in Beauty. 



was about to do the deed of treason which was 
to damn his fame forever. It was Judas Iscariot. 
He ventured the first sinister criticism. 

" Why was this waste of the ointment made ? 
Why was it not sold and given to the poor ?" 

Judas was the money-man of this little com- 
pany. He was the politic "brother." He 
managed the "temporalities," so called. He 
regarded every question in a financial light. 
He was superior to the other brethren in " wordly 
wisdom." He had great influence in the circle. 
Such "brethren" always have been influential 
in the church. 

The others chimed in with this criticism. 

I would not do even Judas an injustice. I do 
not believe that he was worse than many a 
church member with whom I am acquainted. 
He represented all materialistic characters, all 
men whose lives are cast in the moulds of the 
things which are seen. His standard of the 
value of any action was the extent to which it 
accomplished some present and tangible utility. 
He was beginning to lose patience with Jesus 
because Jesus made no opportunities for worldly 
aggrandizement. Judas wished to inaugurate a 
visible, Messianic, sensuous reign, in which he 
should reap material advantages. Giving to 
the poor would make votes. He probably hoped 
that now Jesus would unfurl his banner : and it 
was important, in this coup d'etat, to have a 
plebiscite, a verdict of the mass. In his esti- 
mate Mary had made a silly sacrifice to senti- 
ment. 

The other disciples concurred in this view, 
after it had been suggested by treasurer Judas 
under the specious guise of consideration for the 
poor. The criticism grew into a murmur. round 
the table. 

The reply of Jesus is most striking. " Let 
her alone," said He: "why do you trouble 
her ? She has wrought a beautiful work on me. 
You have the poor with you always, and when 
you will you may do them good ; but me you 
have not always. She has done what she could : 
she came beforehand to anoint my body for 
the burial. Verily I say to you, wherever the 
gospel shall be preached in the whole world, 
what she has done shall also be spoken of, as a 
memorial of her." 

This is a remarkable speech every way. Jesus 
was caught in the toils of his enemies. He 
always knew that there was to be no temporal 
kingdom, with offices and honors and emolu- 
ments, and that now death lay near before Him. 
Beyond that death He saw that His cause was to 
rise and conquer, that the whole world was to 



hear the glad tidings of Jesus, and that whenever 
and wherever that gospel was preached, Mary's 
graceful tribute should be recited as a memorial 
of her. While I speak and while you listen, 
we are fulfilling this prediction made nineteen 
centuries ago about a simple Jewish village girl. 

It is noticeable as showing the care of Jesus 
for the graceful when it has no special utility. 
Jesus took care of the beautiful : He knew that 
the useful would take care of itself. He showed 
how much more precious in His sight is the 
service of the heart than the service of the head ; 
the worship of love than the labor of thought. 

Let us sit down before His words in loving 
study, now that we have had an impression of 
the scene which brought these memorable say- 
ings from His lips of infinite wisdom and love. 
How do they apply to us ? What good for us is 
in them ? 

I. This lesson : we can do something for 
Jesus. 

For Jesus ! Let us pause on that. He is the 
central object of all affection. So far as we can 
learn, all heaven loves Him. The angels adore 
Him. Gabriel felt himself lifted with a wondrous 
exaltation when he, the great angel of the lily- 
wand, was made High Commissioner to declare 
to the maiden Mary, in Nazareth, that she was 
to become Mother of his adored Lord. Angels 
besplendored the sky above the Shepherd's 
Field, outside Bethlehem, and filled the air and 
made the welkin ring with celestial jubilations, 
when Jesus lay in Mary's arms. 

Angels and men must have some one to love. 
We cannot live on vague abstract ideas of senti- 
mentality. There must be a real person to be 
lover of our souls. Jesus is that person. He 
has all that is noblest in man, all that is meek- 
est in woman, all that is softest in childhood, 
and all that is celestial in angels. He is God, 
projected into a lovable form of humanity. He 
had been in angel form, a visible object of love 
to the angels, and now He has come to do for 
us the service He had done for them. And 
they, our angelic kinspeople of the skies, so free 
from jealousy, shouted when, holding them by 
one hand, our dear Lord, stretched out the other 
to fold us men to His heart. The world now 
honors God in honoring Jesus. The temptation 
to idolatry is broken. We can pour all our love 
on Jesus, and thus worship the eternal God. 

But, all love is active. It does something. 
Jesus said of Mary, "She hath done." Love 
may become openly demonstrative. Now and 
then it will break over all bounds we set to it, 
and proclaim itself in conspicuous act. If not 



Mary : Religion in Beauty. 



187 



always indeed doing so, then love will quietly 
but tenderly regard all the interests of the dear 
object, and stand displayed when the beloved 
needs it. We are all so familiar with the pal- 
pable endearments of love, that they are re- 
garded as quite natural. It will break out in 
some way. If no more, he who loves will so live 
that the beloved will see that the lover would 
do anything in his power to make the beloved 
happy. 

NOW, WHAT CAN WE DO FOR JESUS ? 

I. What does He most desire ? 

Certainly not the product of our skill and 
labor, not what is purchaseable with money, be- 
cause He made all those things, and already 
possesses countless piles of such treasures. He 
does not desire what only the rich or only the 
strong or only the witty or only the great can 
give. 

He most desires what every little child and 
venerable sage, what every beggar and every 
millionaire, what every slave and every em- 
peror, what every deformed person and every 
beauty has to give. He wants our hearts. The 
pleasure of Jesus is in the consciousness that He 
loves us, and in His faith in our love. What- 
ever is rendered without the love is utterly value- 
less in His eyes. The love that comes to Him 
with no offering in its hands because it has 
nothing to bring, is perfectly acceptable. 

He comes to us soliciting. He desires some- 
thing. He asks for it. What can it be that 
my Lord should want of me ? Let me hear 
His petition : " My son, give me — " 

What, my Lord ? What have I that Thou 
hast not ? What have I that Thou didst not 
give me ? How can I, so utterly dependent, en- 
rich my Lord who owns the worlds ? What 
shall I give thee ? 

— " Thy heart/' 

It is not the rigorous holding of ourselves to 
duty that He desires, not forced fasts and pray- 
ers drawn out painfully and prayerlessly. It is 
what bursts from us, what we cannot restrain, 
the spontaneous outgush of our souls : this it is 
that is pleasing to Jesus. 

Our religion, to be really religious, must not 
be forced. Love is not the product of Duty. 
Duty is the product of Love. Jesus has no 
value for the love which springs from duty ; but 
the duty which is discharged from love is sub- 
lime. We must, therefore, — such is the consti- 
tution of man, — put ourselves in such relation 
to Jesus that we shall see Him in His love-win- 
ning attitudes. Whatever does not this for 
us is not gospel. Whatever does not this for 



us is not wholesome, whether as philosophy 
or poetry or practical direction. That cannot 
be truth to me which does not represent Jesus 
as lovable. That cannot be wholesome for me 
which does not make me feel more and more 
tender toward Him. 

We need more heart in our religion. In this 
thinking age it is corning to be too much a 
matter of thought. In this busy age it is coming 
to be too much a matter of business. Oh, for a 
warm springtide through our hearts, waking 
luxuriant lovingness ! Then we shall be more 
religious. Let us remember, beloved, that the 
science of botany is not a garden of roses, that 
the science of physiology is not living manhood, 
and that, quite equally, the science of theology 
is not religion. 

2. If Jesus seem to be far off from us, we 
can bring Him near by His own rule. He rep- 
resents Himself as the Son of Humanity. See 
a man : that is the father and brother of Jesus. 
See a woman : that is His mother and sister. 
He says that He is present in the person of 
every human being in need, and receives every 
kindness shown such a person as a kindness 
done to Him. 

Now, let us set to the work of increasing hu- 
man happiness. It is surprising how easily that 
can be done, and how it gives the doer happi- 
ness, and how it grows into a blessed habit. 
Try it. If you cannot be much of a scholar or 
a saint, if you cannot very well understand the 
doctrines of the Bible, if you have not quite so 
clearly defined an experience as some other 
disciple, let that rest a while, and go about find- 
ing Jesus in needy humanity. 

And you need not always go down into cel- 
lars nor climb to filthy attics, nor penetrate to 
horrible dens of infamous suffering. There 
may be a man quite near you, a man who does 
not want money. He has piles of that. But 
he does want tenderness. He has had a hard 
fight to reach his position. He is kicked 
or kissed by the envious or the treacherous. 
He wants an honest heart that will treat him 
like a man, so that he may know that it is not 
for his money that your humaneness comes to 
him. Give it. 

Yon beautiful woman does not need caresses. 
She is suffocated with the fumes of adulation 
already. The vehicles in the Park drive into 
her carriage, because her wondrous eyes have 
charmed the skill out of the hands of the drivers. 
Perhaps she wants a friend, a real, true friend, 
who would value her as much and stand by her 
as thoroughly if she were a poor girl teaching 



188 



Mary : Religion in Beauty. 



a school for a livelihood, or if the moth of dis- 
ease had fretted away that veil of beauty which 
hangs over her flesh and gives her person its 
exquisite charm. 

Oh, my little children, it is often not so much 
by what we do as by what we do not, that we 
make others happy. It is the keeping the little 
frown from the brow, the little pout from the 
lips, the little crossness out of the tones, that 
we become substantial blessings to our families. 
Remember that you make people better as you 
make them happier. Happiness is a means of 
grace. Now, my dear child, you faithful little 
scholar in my Sunday-school, you often desire 
strongly to be a missionary in your own house- 
hold, to bring your parents, if you can, to Je- 
sus. It is not right for you to lecture your 
father and your mother. You cannot preach. 
Then set yourself to the earnest study of how 
to make them happy, and then let them know 
that it is for Jesus, and your lives will be as 
ointment poured forth, as when Mary broke her 
alabaster flask and poured the spikenard on 
the head and feet of Jesus, "and the house will 
be filled with the odor of the ointment." 
3. We can do something beautiful for Jesus. 
There has always been among men a measur- 
ing of the useful against the beautiful, as though 
they were antagonistic, as though the useful 
were not the beautiful in every-day working 
dress, and as though the beautiful were not the 
useful in perfumed garments of glory. And so 
they have strictly begrudged the time and 
money and space necessary for the existence of 
the beautiful, as if that were so much abstracted 
from the heritage of humanity. 

Really, and in God's sight, nothing is more 
useful than the beautiful. He will not exist 
without it. He turns His holy eyes no where 
that beauty is not. In those very material things 
which seem loathsome to us He perceives, and 
to the microscopic eyes of Science and to the 
telescopic eyes of Poetry he reveals, a thousand 
glorious beauties. The cesspool that seems a 
reek of muck to common eyes is really as much 
crowded with beauty as the rainbow that made 
Wordsworth's " heart leap up." 

There are myriads of beauties which seem to 
be utterly " useless," in the meaning of that 
word which confines it to what makes money 
and the things which money can buy. The rose 
of Sharon and the lily of the valley cannot run 
a saw-mill and have not any commercial value. 
Pictures are not " board" and statues are not 
"lodgings." The earth would turn as well on 
its axis if there were no tender grace of loveli- 



ness in all the world ; and the race might be 
propagated if every man were a deformity, every 
woman a fright, and every child a hideousness. 
But it would not be nearly so nice as it is now. 
And that is little to say. Let us say more : it 
would sink and sink and sink until humanity 
fell down to utter animality, and the mill of 
"the useful" would grind us to death. 

Your practical men are kept in sufficient ani- 
mation to be practical by the beauty which is 
about them. They do not know it any more 
than the flower knows that it owes its life as well 
as its beauty to the sun. Strike all the beauti- 
ful from the world, leave us only the useful, the 
manifestly useful, and we should lose all elas- 
ticity out of our lives, all strength out of our 
purpose, all energy out of our arms. It is the 
thousand-fold beauty, meeting our eyes at every 
turn, that saves us. It is what cost so much as 
Mary's pound of spikenard, poured forth in 
wjhat seems to be such a waste to eyes like 
Judas's, which fills the world with odor and 
comes to be monumental, when ledgers and 
bank-books are clean forgotten. 

It is delightful to have something done with- 
out regard to the returns to the doer, to have 
something spontaneous, ample, gloriously use- 
less, thousands spent for the mere pleasure of 
spending it on the pleasures of others, to have 
the savings of years bottled in a flask; and then 
pour it forth on feet and head that will be dead 
in a week ; and then break the flask. 

To some it seems like a criminal waste to put 
all the skill and labor of a lifetime on a few feet 
of canvas, while the painter can scarcely get 
bread, and then give that canvas to the world. 
But it will impart pleasure to thousands, and to 
be happy is of religion, and to create happiness 
is of piety. Let men be like God, lavish toward 
God as God is lavish toward men. Pour out 
your money on the beautiful. Encourage the 
workers in the beautiful. Do not be afraid that 
having all your lives had the reputation of being 
practical you should now be suspected of being 
a fool for spending your money on the unuseful. 
You who are rich ought to provide the beautiful 
for yourselves and for the poor, and let the poor 
provide the useful for themselves and for you. 

When we consider the vast amounts of money 
and time and careful skill expended on the ca- 
thedrals of the middle ages, it seems to our 
practical age a great waste. It was not. Some 
of those artists lived on the simplest fare, and 
put the most tedious and painstaking work 
into a few cubic feet of stone, and died un- 
known. But that block stands to-day in its 



Mary : Religion in Beauty. 



189 



place and gives what is needed by the whole for 
completeness, and takes a grace from the com- 
pleted whole, and the cathedral remains a 
beauty and a blessing. It is of no " use." 
People could have worshipped as well in a 
square barn that had not a florin's worth of 
ornament. That is true. But that style of 
architecture was the only vent for lavish love of 
Jesus in that day. It was the mediaeval Mary's 
flask of precious ointment. It was poured forth. 
Of course it is quite absurd to do such a thing 
in America as build a Gothic church, especially 
a little wooden Gothic meeting-house. The 
Gothic style is suited to religious spectacular 
performances. They were very useful in other 
ages, however much we may have outgrown 
them. A church now is an apartment erected 
for the purpose of delivering and hearing reli- 
gious discourses. It is an auditorium. The 
first thing in a church-building is its acoustic 
properties, and no Gothic church is fit to preach 
in. But you may beautify your own church 
endlessly, even if it be built as plain as the 
" Church of the Strangers." 

You must not be deterred from doing it by 
the sinister criticism of Judas. You need not 
abstain from giving your church a splendid 
communion service because the money "might 
have been given to the poor," nor putting on 
the wall near your pew an instructive and beau- 
tiful and costly religious picture, because the 
money " might have been given to the poor." 
You are doing for the poor whatsoever you do 
for Jesus, as you are doing for Jesus what- 
ever you do for the poor. It is quite well to 
dwell much on the thought that " godliness is 
profitable;" but would it not do us good to cover 
that solid fact with the embroidered altar-cloth 
of the thought of " the beauty of holiness ?" 

Mary, at the Bethany supper, could do noth- 
ing useful for her Lord. Martha was serving. 
Simon and Lazarus were conversing with Him. 
She could only love him, until she remembered 
her flask of spikenard which she had kept to 
use in daily anointing her hair, so as to be sweet 
when Jesus and Lazarus came in from Jerusa- 
lem, and she ran to her wardrobe and brought 
it out, and poured it lavishly on the limbs of her 
Lord. Such should be your conduct, my sisters 
of fashion and fortune, of beauty and genius. 
Wave your banners of beauty for Jesus ; pour 
your spikenard of sweetness on His head, 
and care for the other poor at other times, and 
do not be deterred by Iscariot. Jesus will pro- 
nounce it " beautiful," as he did in the case of 
Mary. The phrase which is translated in our 



common version, " she hath wrought a good 
work," is well rendered, but still better and 
more nearly accurate would it be to say : " she 
hath wrought a beautiful work on me." Mary's 
commendation by Jesus is our Lord's monument 
to Beauty. 

II. There is also in this text a lesson as to 
THE LIMIT OF DUTY. 

It is not a very encouraging sight when men 
are anxious to find the limit on the other side, 
because that indicates a want of earnestness in 
duty. It is well to be anxious to know the limit 
on this side ; as it is indicative of conscientious- 
ness, when a man is anxious not to fall short of 
what is actually necessary. It is not probable 
that any of us will surpass his own standard. 
Then that standard ought not to be very low, 
and certainly should not be a wrong standard. 

(i.) Our limit of duty, then, should not be 
what others do. When such a standard is taken 
we must make our judgment by what others do, 
either by taking them in the mass or by taking 
them individually. If the former, we shall make 
mistakes as to the general average ; and the 
general average is raised or depressed or kept 
steady by each single individual. If in any 
society of which I am a member, I merely main- 
tain the general average, it is manifest that I 
contribute nothing to the advancement of that 
society. If I fall below or go above that stand- 
ard, I have manifestly abandoned it. 

But if I make what others do the determina- 
tion of my limit of duty, and am not studying 
the general average, then it must be some single 
individual who is to be my exemplar. How 
shall I select him ? He must be exactly of my 
age, size, strength, culture, and circumstances, 
or else he can be no rule for me. 

And, if I take others, others may take me and 
my conduct as the standard of duty, and so we 
shall fall into the number of those of whom Paul 
speaks, when he says : " They measuring them- 
selves by themselves, and comparing themselves 
among themselves, are not wise." 

(2.) Nor will a lover of Jesus content himself 
with such a course of life as will excuse him to 
society or keep him from adverse criticism. 

" Society" is a very general expression, and 
means one thing in the city and another in the 
country; one thing in one city and one thing in 
another; one thing in England and another in 
the United States. 

Society sometimes has very little regard for 
us in our character as lovers of Jesus. If we 
meet its demand in our manners and in our 
expressed opinions, we may fail of our duty to 



190 



Mary : Religion in Beauty. 



individuals and be utterly wanting in love for 
Jesus, and yet society will not "send us to 
Coventry." Judas was a man of the world, dis- 
charging his social duties properly, above sus- 
picion, keeping his accounts carefully, a respect- 
able church officer, yet Jesus did not say of 
him as he did of Mary, " He hath done what 
he could." Many a man hath been really dis- 
tinguished in society by his reputation for cor- 
rect regularity up to the moment when there 
has come some grave exposure which has blasted 
his reputation for ever. 

Even the church of which we are members 
cannot sit in private scrutiny on our souls. In 
that Bethany company, only Jesus knew how 
much Mary loved Him, and how little Judas. 
It is not enough that the pastor and the church 
council do not call us to account. We may lead 
a life of propriety in which nothing for church 
discipline may appear, and yet it may be a cold, 
unloving, dreary life in our souls. Or, there 
may be outward faults which the charity of our 
brethren may excuse and cover. This can be 
no standard for us. 

(3.) Nor is our limit to be that which we have 
always done hitherto. When men become pro- 
fessed disciples of Jesus, they have a certain 
amount of pecuniary, intellectual, and moral 
ability. But no Christian is expected to stand 
at that. He is to " grow in grace and in the 
knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
Christ." The achievements of a man are not 
to be demanded of the strength of a child ; but 
it is most unmanly in an adult to content him- 
self with the performances of childhood. Each 
year must find us stronger to work, more self- 
denying, wiser in ways of good working, richer 
in all grace, and mightier in all spiritual strength. 
It is this which often ruins Christian character. 
Men do not all they can, and so they grow 
weaker, until they cannot do as much, and so 
die down in the church and die out of the 
church. 

The only limit of my duty is my ut- 
most PRESENT ABILITY. 

We must remember that we have settled it 
that duty which is not the product of love is 
merely such service as machinery can render. 
Whatever we do for Jesus we must do from our 
heart of hearts. Now, love does not sulkily 
ask, u What must I do?" but is running over 
with the perpetual questionings of desire, 
" What may I do for my beloved ?" 

Love catechizes and taxes its resources to the 
utmost, ransacks its coffers for money, its cas- 
ket? for jewels, its cabinets for gems ; gives all ; 



wishes it had more to give ; goes off and works 
for more ; gives that, and feels as if it had done 
nothing: such is the beautiful discontent of 
love. 

The beloved who receives cares nothing for 
the money, the jewels, the gems, the robes, and 
the treasures that are lavished. What would 
they be if given grudgingly ? What would they 
be from unloving hands ? But the love which 
prompts the toil in the loving and the freedom 
in giving, is that which is delightful to the be- 
loved. 

Just so must it be between us and Jesus, the 
lover of our souls. The whole sacrifice of Cal- 
vary would be most horrible to contemplate if 
endured by Jesus unwillingly and as a matter of 
necessity. It is the love and not the blood which 
makes that offering the most binding and en- 
dearing, as well as the most sublime. 

And now, dearly beloved, I do not find it in 
my heart to urge you on the cold trail of duty. 
That might make you merely Judases. Some 
of you are mean toward Jesus with your money. 
When any department of Christian service in 
the church needs money you wait to be ap- 
pealed to, and then you give it as if it were so 
hard to give. You do not study how to save, 
and then go about saying to yourself: " I won- 
der where it would please Jesus that I should 
put this money!" Do you? During the past 
year have you not been appealed to twice where 
you have gone once of your free accord to lay 
out your money Lord? 

And some of you are mean toward Jesus with 
your intellect. Your thoughts run on what you 
love. If you have not thought of Jesus and His 
wants and what will please Him, it is because 
the love is absent. Do you spend as much 
thought upon plans for promoting the glory of 
Jesus, as upon methods for promoting the honor 
of some other loved one ? 

Let us who have long professed to love Him 
search our hearts to know whether he could say 
of us as He did of Mary, ' ' She hath done what she 
could ?" Let us remember that that means all. 
It means not only the deed but the motive of 
doing; not only the costly flask of spikenard, 
but the costlier heart of love. 

You who last Sunday became members of 
this church must now determine to have no 
standard but your utmost present ability, and 
give yourselves no pause in your labors to ac- 
quire greater ability. Get money, get learning, 
get intellectual strength, get moral power, get 
influence, get spikenard, but get them for your 
Lord. Let yours be a loving, adoring religion. 



Mary : Religion in Beauty. 



191 



Pour your lives and hearts out on Jesus. Re- 
gard no flowers sweet in the garden of life 
which you may not bring to your Lord; no 
ointment precious which you cannot pour on 
His head and feet. Search your lives and all 
your assets, and ask yourselves whether there is 
not something more you may give; whether 
you may not do some other thing or something 
more gracefully. Remember that you may 
have all capabilities, and your lives come to 
nothing ; that it does not require much money, 
or much intellect, or much force of character 
to merit the highest and most loving encomiums 
of your Lord. It does require heart and love. 

Do not repress your gushing love in speech 
or act because you may be singular and fall 
under the sneers of the Iscariots. Jesus will 
love and praise you. 

Do not keep back your gifts of affection be- 
cause you are feeble and simple. Mary was a 
woman, and yet she did, did in simplicity, ex- 
pecting no eulogy, what Jesus praised more 
than He did all that disciples had done for Him 
through His whole career. "She hath done 
what she could," should stir the heart of all 



Christian womanhood. My sisters, could that 
be said of you ? 

Think what a monument John of Nazareth 
has erected to the memory of Mary of Bethany ! 
Millions of human beings have read the inscrip- 
tion, "She hath done what she could!" It 
tells the whole story of a life of fullness, com- 
pleteness, love, and beauty. Kings and queens 
have stood crowned before that monument. 
Martyrs, confessors, preachers, poets, prophets, 
ten thousand times ten thousand great and good 
and true and beautiful women and men have 
stood with eyes full of tenderness, and hearts 
full of love, and gazed at that epitaph, " She 
hath done what she could." Canova never made 
such monument for princess as Jesus hath for 
Mary. 

And I, dear Jesus, Thy humble servant, 
knowing it will please Thee, have come to-day, 
to lay a fresh garland on Thy Mary's monu- 
ment, and point my brethren and sisters to its 
glorious epigraph, trusting and praying that 
we may be able to do some sweet and beautiful 
thing to draw on us Thy look of loving ap- 
proval. 



XXXI. 

"AND MARTHA SERVED." — JOHN, XII. 2. 



A FORTNIGHT ago we spoke of Mary and of 
Religion in Beauty. 

Tc-day we speak of Martha and of Religion 
in Service. 

Mary and Martha were the sisters of Lazarus, 
and all three were friends of Jesus. Jesus loved 
women and women loved Jesus. Between all 
grand men and good women there is a reciproc- 
ity of admiration and affection. 

When Jesus became acquainted with this 
charming family circle we have no means of 
knowing ; but they are brought to us three 
times in the history of our Lord very distinctly, 
and a two-volume novel could not make us bet- 
ter acquainted with their characters. 

Between the two sisters there is a contrast, but 
it is a contrast which exists between two excellent 
characters. It is not fair to depreciate either. 
Each had her womanly foibles, and I call them 
"womanly" not in disparagement but in miti- 
gation. Speaking generally, the faults of men 
are the faults of pride, and the faults of women 
are the faults of vanity. Vanity is weak, but 
Pride is wicked. In an honest and critical study 
of character we need not conceal faults ; they 
are not vices. They are superficial, not radical. 

We can never bring humanity to be saintly 
until we can all agree to be willing to allow that 
saints, male and female, are human. And so, 
in speaking of these two holy women and treat- 
ing them as human beings I must not be sus- 
pected of any lack of reverence for the holiness 
of their character, seeing that our dear Lord and 
Saviour made them to be of the number of His 
intimate friends. 

The first opening of the door of their house 
by the hand of the Evangelist shows us a most 
natural and beautiful domestic scene. It is 
in Luke's tenth chapter. 

Jesus had come into the house tired with 
travel and preaching. His reception by the sis- 
ters shows the difference in their temperaments. 
Mary sat at His feet, listening lovingly to His 
words. Mary was receptive. But Martha went 
bustling about the house, preparing many things, 
intent upon giving Jesus something of a festal 



reception as He came from His tiresome journey. 
At last her industry passed over into worry. 
She became cumbered about much serving. 
And then she became a little fretful. And she 
went from the kitchen to the sitting-room and 
broke in upon the party with the half-playful, 
half-petulant speech addressed to Mary through 
Jesus, " Dost Thou not care that my sister hath 
left me to serve alone ? Bid her therefore that 
she help me !" 

All this seems to me to be very natural, if not 
very gracious. 

Let us go among them as human beings and 
look into all their faces, and if possible repro- 
duce all their lives. It may help us to under- 
stand the brief narrative . 

Mary loved Jesus as much as Martha did, 
and Martha as much as Mary. Martha was 
probably the elder sister and had the main 
care of the house. It did not occur to Mary 
that much preparation would be needed, and 
she loved Jesus so that she went straight into the 
sitting-room and took a stool at His feet, in the 
confidence of innocence. Martha loved Him 
just as much, and knew that He must have 
something to eat and water to wash with and a 
comfortable bed. Mary thought of what she 
needed of Jesus. Martha thought of what Jesus 
needed of her. She was so anxious to get back 
to Jesus that she felt keenly how her work was 
depriving her of the pleasure and profit of the 
company of her illustrious friend and guest. 
Mary was having all the good of it. Martha was 
not envious of her sister, but she desired to have 
some of the happiness of that society, and if no 
one helped her she would lose it all. 

Now I think it was very natural that she 
should say what she did. She had some reason. 
It was very nice for Mary to sit at those dear 
feet and hear words of goodness from those dear 
lips. But it was not so nice for Martha to be 
sweating in the kitchen. There may have been 
some impatience in Martha's tone as she uttered 
her request. I suspect there was. But I think 
her speech was a gentle remonstrance with 
Mary. 



Martha : Religion in Service. 



193 



It does not seem to me that the reply of Jesus 
has been always properly interpreted. It has, 
I think, generally been regarded as a rather 
severe rebuke to Martha and a boundless com- 
pliment to Mary. I venture to say that it was 
neither the one nor the other. So much here 
depends upon the tone. Suppose Jesus had 
pronounced the words this way — 

[It is impossible to reproduce elocution in a 
printed report. The preacher here recited the 
words with a frown and in a rough, scolding, blus- 
tering tone, in the first part of the sentence ; in 
the second part, " And Mary hath chosen," with 
a bland look] — " Martha, Martha, thou art care- 
ful and perplexed about many things : but one 
thing is needful. And Mary hath chosen that 
good part which shall not be taken away from 
her." But He did not. He did probably con- 
vey in His tone, as is intimated in the repeti- 
tion of her name, some dissatisfaction with her 
course. It was, however, only the dissatisfaction 
of love, not of anger. He desired to have her 
there, where Mary was. He loved the sisters 
equally. He was not satisfied that Martha 
should be worrying in the kitchen and He should 
be losing her society. He did not undervalue 
care for his personal comfort. No man, sinner 
or saint, ever does. It was a token of her love 
substantially given. He must have uttered the 
words tenderly, with the tone of love reproving 
love for putting itself to trouble. He did need 
food and a resting-place, but He also needed 
her company. And so, with a loving smile and 
a sweet look that pleaded His love against His 
words, He uttered this sentence that had in it 
more of warning than of reproof. 

She was in peril. She was undertaking too 
much for her means. That was making her 
over-careful. She was becoming distracted and 
worried, anxious and troubled. She was losing 
her self-control. She was in danger of losing 
her whole enjoyment of that for which she was 
working. Now, no true man can see his friend, 
especially if that friend be a woman, making 
over-exertion for his comfort, and be uncon- 
cerned. Unless he be entirely selfish, he will 
interfere. So Jesus did, as soon as she opened 
the door and looked in. 

Nor did the reply of Jesus imply that only 
one dish was necessary. That is an absurd in- 
terpretation of His words. Nor did it mean that 
religion was that one thing. This is a mystical 
interpretation. The plain, common-sense mean- 
ing of this part of the reply is, that He required 
only one thing in His reception, namely, love of 
Him. Martha had that. All then that was 



necessary was simply attention to His simple 
wants. 

What he says of Mary is not so much com- 
plimentary as defensive. We must recollect that. 
It was not a volunteered statement. Martha 
knew that she loved Jesus, and believed that 
Mary did too, but thought that her sister had a 
very indifferent way of showing it : and Martha 
intimated as much. Jesus simply meant to de- 
fend Mary. He said, " Martha, you shall not 
take away Mary's share in this loving reception 
of me. She has chosen the part of goodness as 
well as you." The fact is that the reply of Jesus 
was a sweet speech to both the women, and both 
felt pleased and improved by it. 

Mary had her danger. It was the danger of 
selfishness. She was leaving her work for her 
love. She should have helped her sister, and 
both sisters should have done only what was ne- 
cessary, and then together spent what time they 
could in loving communion with the Lord. 
Martha's task had been lighter. Mary's enjoy- 
ment of Jesus had been greater. For Mary 
must have felt that Martha had reason for her 
playful reproach, and after her sister had left the 
room she could not have stayed comfortably with 
Jesus. 

There is no record of what followed, but I have 
no doubt that when Martha shut the door behind 
her, Jesus intimated somehow to Mary that she 
should go to the help of Martha, for He saw 
that Mary's peril was in the direction of quiet- 
ism, as Martha's was in the direction of worry. 

The next view we have of this household is in 
John's twelfth chapter. 

Lazarus lay dead in the house, and Jesus re- 
turned to Bethany on the third day after hear- 
ing of the death of his friend. As soon as 
Martha learned that Jesus was approaching, she 
went out to meet him. " But Mary sat still in 
the house," is John's characteristic description. 
The temperaments of these women are shown 
in the hour of their great bereavement. The 
younger subdued and still, the elder demon- 
strative and active. Martha remonstrated with 
Jesus for His absence, and kept up some argu- 
ment with Him. Mary fell at His feet and wept, 
and repeated the first words of Martha, and 
no more. At the grave, Martha remonstrated 
against removing the stone; Mary was silent. 
Mary's was a dependent nature. The Jews 
from Jerusalem tC came to Mary," as the record 
says, showing that it was ker sorrow which drew 
them. 

The last view we have of this household is at 
the Bethany feast, in the house of Simon the 



Martha : Religion in Service. 



leper, where Lazarus " sat at the table with 
Him," and Mary performed the graceful act of 
anointing Jesus, " and Martha served." 

Here is the same contrast of excellencies. This 
completes the picture of the two sisters, and 
draws our attention strictly to the admirable 
Martha and to Religion in Service. 

There must always be service. 

No contrivances of society or of government 
can abrogate what is constituted by the necessi- 
ties of human nature. To set all men and 
vvomen free from service is a Utopian idea. 
There is a certain amount of work to be done. 
There is a certain number of people to do it. If 
I fail to do my share, then that must go wholly 
undone and the world be the loser by my failure ; 
or else some one else must have my share of the 
labor added to his share, and thus be overtaxed ; 
or else it must be distributed among all the 
workers. But, the work must be done. This is 
a fixed necessity. 

The food must be gathered and prepared. 

The shelter must be constructed. 

These two departments are at the bottom of all 
things, as foundations, as the necessities of man's 
mere animal existence on the earth. Say noth- 
ing of enjoyment and progress and you must 
have something to eat and some shelter. In 
almost all parts of the world to these we must 
add clothing. 

There are always helpless members of society, 
infants, invalids, idiots, and the superannuated : 
so that each man must do more than will merely 
obtain food for himself and shelter for himself. 

The very moment improvement is thought of 
you begin to increase the work to be done. If 
you are to have variety in your food and viands 
more savory, if you are to have comfort in your 
clothes and any little thing added for ornament, 
if your house is to be anything more than poles 
covered with brushwood, you increase the work 
to be done. And we must do all this. 

It is exceedingly difficult to draw the distinc- 
tion between "necessaries," as they are called, 
and "luxuries." We can, perhaps, say to an 
exact degree what will keep a man from dying, 
and that is the closest calculation of the " neces- 
sary." But then the question comes whether 
it is necessary for the race of mankind to be con- 
tinued, if men are kept down in the low plane 
of mere animal existence. There is nothing 
useful, beautiful, or progressive in such a life. 
They might as well be swept from existence. 

But the moment you give a man any more 
you make the man's necessities a sliding scale. 
Certain food in certain modes of preparation are 



necessary to some people. A carpet on the 
floor, a picture on the wall, is necessary for 
some. As observation is extended and taste 
cultivated, other things become necessary, and 
you do not know where it is to stop. But it 
all makes work. 

And yet, upon the part of most men there is 
a perpetual and natural effort to escape from 
service, and when the work plainly must be done 
each of us tries to get at the light end of the 
load. Men who can escape service rejoice, and 
are envied by those who cannot. The latter are 
very largely in the majority, and always mus< 
be. 

Just fancy everything done, all the houses 
built and furnished, enough clothes ready made 
to supply the world for a hundred years, 
and food, sweeter and better than anything 
fresh can be, prepared in such style as to keep 
for any number of years. What then ? Why, 
] some one would have to light the candles at 
night and put them away in the day ; some one 
would have to make up the beds in the morning 
and sweep th e rooms ; some one would have to 
put the food on the table and clear it away. 
Each person would be compelled to serve him- 
self and others, or let all the old and feeble per- 
ish, let all the amenities of life be forgotten, and 
let life itself shrink to lowest forms of mere 
animal selfishness. 

Even Plato, in his fancied Republic, in which 
he provided for a community of property and of 
wives, when he came to classify the population, 
arranged them as magistrates, warriors, and 
laborers. There must be laborers to sustain 
magistrates and warriors. 

Let us then accept service as one of the con- 
ditions of human existence. 

On some men and women the natural tem- 
perament lays the burden of service. They can- 
not be happy when they are not busy. That 
was plainly Martha's case. The circulation of 
her blood was too quick for a languid life. It 
kept her moving. Some women could sit down 
and see dust fall in layers on all the furniture, 
but Martha could not have rested if she had de- 
tected a closet- door ajar or a shred dependent 
from a chair. Such people must serve. And 
Martha served." 

Often it is the position in the household which 
devolves the serving. The woman is at once 
wife and mother, is responsible for all the in-door 
service, as the husband is for all the out-door 
work. She must do all that is required for the 
comfort of the family, or she must employ those 
who will do it, and she must superintend them. 



Martha : Religion in Service. 



195 



When she falls ill or grows old, the eldest 
daughter often takes the work. She must serve. 
She must be daughter and wife to the father, 
sister and mother to the brothers. There is 
something quite trying, but very beautiful in the 
position of a dutiful eldest daughter. It is try- 
ing because it is a work beyond her years, beauti- 
ful to see one so young che'erfully accepting the 
burdens of more advanced life. Such a girl 
contrasts with a selfish daughter who allows the 
aged or the invalided mother to struggle on 
under her domestic burdens, and gives no help. 
V^nd when the mother is taken and there are 
younger children, then the eldest daughter must 
serve. Such was probably Martha's case. " And 
Martha served." 

Moreover, the doers of the beautiful depe7id 
upon the doers of the serviceable. 

This is said for the benefit of both parties. 
The remembrance, of it will keep the doers of the 
beautiful in gratitude to the less conspicuous and 
less praised doers of the useful. The remem- 
brance of it will cheer the workers in obscurity. 
And they need much to cheer them. The 
makers of beautiful things are open to criticism, 
but they are stimulated by praise, while the 
doers of the useful are sufferers from neglect. 

Women largely form this class, especially 
those at the head of households. Woman's 
work is never done. Woman's work is generally 
obscure. Very few of us men stop to think how 
many wearying things a woman must perform 
simply to keep herself from being blamed. She 
has no praise if she does it all; but if one thing 
be omitted it is noticed at once. We have the 
pleasure if she succeeds ; she has the blame if 
she fails. 

A household is like a music-box. The little 
pegs set in the revolving barrel must be placed 
in just such a position; the tongues they strike 
must be of just such a length and thickness, 
and the spring which drives the barrel must be 
of just such an elasticity, or else the tune is not 
correctly played. So, in a house, everything 
must be there, and must fit into everything else. 

Few things on earth are so beautiful as a well- 
ordered household. Few people reflect how 
much those members of a family, who have 
nothing to do with housekeeping owe to those 
who do, — the father, the son, the brother, the 
visitor, to the wife, the mother, the sister, the 
hostess. If the man be a mechanic, who is due 
at the factory at a certain hour, he has his full 
sleep, because he knows that the watchful wife 
will have him up in time, and water and soap 
ready for him, and the clean shirt and the well- 



darned stockings and the nice breakfast. He 
does his full day's work because of that, and 
because he knows that on his return everything 
will be in good order. 

The apartments are small but neat. How 
easy it was to say that ! And how easy it seems 
to keep small apartments neat ! But how hard 
it is when one tries to do it ! Things will accu- 
mulate even in a poor man's house, and the wife 
does not know what to do with them. She can- 
not afford to throw away, as the rich would do, 
and she cannot find room for them. How it 
wears a nice woman ! And how it hurts her to 
know that her husband and children do not dis- 
cover that she is doing anything in housekeep- 
ing until she has done something wrong. And 
how little men reflect on the general credit they 
enjoy because of the unheeded devotion of their 
wives and daughters to the details of keeping 
the house. 

I was amused last week at a little domestic 
incident in the house of a clergyman, which 
house is in " apartments," as we say in New 
York. He had missed something and was in 
search of it, and pushing with a man's careless- 
ness from the sitting-room, where there were 
visitors, he left the intermediate door wide open. 
His wife rushed after him, her face all aglow 
with affection and interest, and I heard her say, 
" My dear! it's the study of our lives to keep 
these doors shut !" I laughed till I cried at the 
earnestness of the good woman's tone and the 
intensity of the phrase, •" the study of our lives," 
as applied to herself and daughters in connec- 
tion with the matter of keeping doors shut ! But 
when I reflected how that wife had been raised, 
and how she was compelled to receive hosts of 
visitors and kinspeople used to better things, 
and that her husband's congregation allowed 
him just enough to live on and was in debt to 
him hundreds of dollars, and that she was, with 
her woman's pride, concealing the fact that two 
children were sleeping on a single bedstead in 
what was more of a closet than a room, and that 
all this was done that her husband might fulfil] 
his noble mission, I felt that he and the public 
did not know how much they owed to her that 
served. But for her economy and carefulness 
he must have abandoned his post, 

And yet good women everywhere are suffering 
in their souls because they feel as if they were 
doing nothing for the world, because they are 
doing nothing that is conspicuous. 

Sometimes ladies of my parish complain to 
me that their domestic duties are interfering 
with their religion. Really, my sisters, this is 



196 



Martha : Religion in Service. 



simply absurd. If it be your duty, do it : nothing 
else at the moment can be your duty. If you 
ought to cook or sew, or scrub or dust, or any- 
thing else to make your home happy, then that 
is your religion. Do you think you would be 
pleasing God to lay aside your husband's gar- 
ment, or your child's, to let them suffer, to let 
the child from its discomfort be unhappy and 
miss its school duties, to let your husband from 
his discomfort be unhappy and perhaps spoil 
his argument at the bar, his sermon in the 
pulpit, his diagnosis of a sick man's case, while 
you go to read your Bible ? I do not. 

There can certainly be no objection to your 
studying art, science, literature, or even politics, 
after your home-work is done. Then you may 
become as brilliant as you can. But no poem, 
essay, painting, sculpture, or other conspicuous 
work by a woman can have any credit with 
God while the home duties are neglected. A 
woman's mission is to stay at home. If she is 
not strong-minded enough to do that; she is 
contemptibly weak. The most eloquent pleaders 
for woman's rights — which God grant they may 
obtain ! — are the women who stay at home and 
there do woman's work. 

It is the performers of the serviceable that 
make place and space for the performances that 
are beautiful. 

How could Mary have had her pound of oint- 
ment of spikenard in her alabaster box if some 
one had not gathered the aromatic herb, and 
expressed its juices and compounded the oint- 
ment and made the flask and brought it to her 
for sale? Why did she find the money to buy 
it and the time to use it and the opportunity 
to pour it on the head of Jesus ? Because 
"Martha served." How could you famous 
painters make your pictures which make your 
fame but for the poor miner who digs your 
pigments from the earth and the unknown 
operative in the manufactory who prepares 
them for your palette ? How could you sculp- 
tors present your embodied beauties to the world 
if it were not for the laborer who takes the 
rough marble from the quarry and the servant 
who mixes the clay for your fine plastic work ? 
And you, famous poet or essayist, how would 
you do your largely beautiful things if your 
servants did not mix the mash of the paper- 
vats and the black-lead of the printer's ink? 
Everywhere, in all departments, the conspicu- 
ous and lauded performers of acts of surpassing 
beauty, that give perpetual blessings to the 
world, are dependent on the work of those who 
serve. 



Let those who are called to serve cheer them- 
selves with this consideration also, that service 
maybe continuous, while acts of lavish beautiful- 
ness can be only occasional. 

Only once in her lifetime could Mary have the 
pleasure and the honor of condensing all her 
savings into a precious alabaster flask of oint- 
ment of spikenard and pouring it on the head 
of Jesus. But Martha could serve Him day and 
night all His life long. Her acts of devotion to 
Jesus were not such as to make it appropriate 
that He should praise her before a company at 
a feast, but they were such as attached Him to 
her house and made Him show her such atten- 
tion that His disciples and friends generally 
knew that He loved Martha. It was a blessed 
thing to give and to receive, that anointing at 
the Bethany supper: to give once, to receive 
once. Jesus, with exalted politeness, gave it 
the turn of being a preparatory anointing for 
His burial. But it was not a thing that it would 
have been possible to give daily, nor pleasant to 
have received daily. Mary's act was a contri- 
bution to the glory of Jesus, Martha's service 
was a perpetual contribution to His comfort. 

And that is what He needed. A man who is 
much before the public, who has his nerves 
racked and his vitality exhausted by the inces- 
sant demands of others, knows how grateful are 
quiet and the appliances of physical comfort. 
Even princes could not endure perpetual fetes 
and coronation-days. They must have retreats 
where they can unbend and sleep and rest. 
A woman's hand must have been there or else 
no place has the requisite softness. 

We may be sure of this that if there had been 
no Martha in that house Jesus would sometimes 
have called to see the lovely Mary, but He would 
not have stayed there long. It was Martha's 
persistent and admirable housewifery that made 
everything so comfortable in the house of Laza- 
rus as to constitute it the favorite resort of Jesus. 
It is delicious to be anointed as Jesus was, but 
one could not live on the ointment of spikenard. 
It was Martha's breakfast that strengthened the 
dear Lord to go back into the fight in the Tem- 
ple. It was Martha's suppers that revived His 
bodily strength when He came home tired and 
fretted and worn. It was the good bed and fresh 
bed-linen prepared by Martha that were balm 
to his aching limbs. 

" And Martha served." John records that as 
if to make us certain that this Bethany supper 
was a good one. If her hands were put to it the 
entertainment would be complete. 

Finally, let those whose religion is in service 



Martha: Religion in Service. 



197 



be cheered by this consideration that the exam- 
ple of service stirs to the doing of the beau- 
tiful. 

Day and night Martha had been doing some- 
thing that ministered to the comfort of Jesus, and 
He had exhibited in His manner how greatly He 
appreciated it. No doubt that in the morning 
He often told her of the comfort He had had in 
her guest-chamber the over night. No doubt He 
often praised her good dishes. For Jesus was most 
observant of little things. Nothing escaped His 
attention. He was not such a man that He 
never opened his lips except to speak of His 
solemn mission. He must have talked often and 
long of domestic matters in the house in which 
He was staying. It would have been frightful 
to have had Him in any home if He had sat for 
hours speechless under the brooding horror of 
His approaching death. 

It is probable that it occurred to the mind of 
the good Mary that her sister was doing so much 
for Jesus and she so little. Perhaps she felt 
that Jesus would not be so frequent a guest at 
the house if she were there alone, simply sitting 
at His feet. She would not take away the crown 
of Martha, but she would have some glory of 
making visible proof of her love. Probably she 
did not have much natural talent for cooking 
and general housekeeping. Alas ! some women 
have not ! But she did have taste. She was 
fond of perfumes. She could do something. It 
should not be said that hers was a mere dreamy 
love, an unflowering and unfruitful plant. She 
would do something. It should be something 
which would demonstrate her love beyond all 
doubt. She would take her prized spikenard 
and pour it all on Jesus. But it was Martha's 
example that stimulated her to this. 

Sometimes a rich man does a great thing for 
the cause of Jesus. It comes once, and large 
and noticeable, like the flower of the century- 
plant. Men are at a loss to divine his reason for 
this special act upon this special occasion. They 
conjecture almost every other possible motive, 
good and bad, except perhaps this which I am 
about to name. He may have had in his em- 
ploy for very many years one who also was the 
servant of Jesus. He may have watched this 
humble Christian doing all he could in his sim- 
ple way and with his slender means for his 
heavenly Lord while faithful to his earthly mas- 
ter. And that master may have at last felt that 
he must do something for The Christ : and he 
did it all at once, like Mary with her spike- 
nard. 

And now, my dear friends, we have set before 
us these two sisters, the representatives of reli- 



gion in the beautiful and religion in the ser- 
viceable. 

Let us recall the fact that never is one men- 
tioned without the other. Jesus said that wher- 
ever the gospel was preached what Mary had 
done should be reported as a memorial of her. 
But we notice that their devoted mutual friend, 
John the Evangelist, has taken good care that it 
should be quite as true of Martha. 

Let us also remember that it is put of record 
that "Jesus loved Martha and her sister and 
Lazarus," and that Martha is named first. " ; Tis 
first the good and then the beautiful." 

Let us also remember that these different 
modes of love's exhibition have no antagonism. 
They are sisters. How beautiful they are in one 
family ! How needful Martha is to Mary, how 
ornamental Mary is to Martha. Martha is the 
refreshing and fructifying rain-cloud : Mary is 
the beautiful rainbow. Mary is love's blossoms : 
Martha is love's fruitage. Martha clung to the 
divine humanity of Jesus, Mary to the human 
divinity of Christ. Mary is love at its worship, 
and Martha is love at its work. Both are pre- 
cious to Jesus. He praises Mary because she 
needs a defence in a world given to practicalities. 
He praises Martha privately because He must 
praise her so often ; and secures her immor- 
tality, because He will not let the smoothing 
of a pillow for Him go without its reward. 

And now, dear brethren, who shall represent 
Martha, and who Mary, in our church? You 
must have the beauty of usefulness, or at least 
yield the uses of beauty to the world. Which 
shall it be in each of you ? But reflect that no 
life is so great as that which unites both these 
characteristics. To do good constantly in an 
earnest serviceable way, and to clothe the strong 
act with the graceful folds of the drapery of 
the beautiful, — this is to have a complete life. 
Your usefulness need not be unbeautiful. It is 
a mistake to suppose that the gracefulness of 
the diction detracts from the clearness of the 
thought or the power of the reasoning. Rough- 
ness is not strength any more than smoothness 
is beauty. One need not be rude of manners to 
be an effective worker in any department. 

But, beloved, be assured of this, that if you 
and I love our Lord Jesus Christ really and 
truly, as Martha did, and as Mary did, our love 
will make itself known as best suits our tempera- 
ment, it will come out in Mary's spikenard or in 
Martha's serving, and that whichever way it 
makes its appearance our Lord will approve it 
and will give it immortality. 

May Jesus Christ our Lord accept ana conse- 
crate our spikenard and our service. 



XXXII. 

" §w (BUI $rt Urn?' 



'AND PHARAOH SAID UNTO JACOB, HOW OLD ART THOU? AND JACOB SAID UNTO PHARAOH, THE 

DAYS OF THE YEARS OF MY PILGRIMAGE ARE AN HUNDRED AND THIRTY YEARS : FEW AND EVIL 
HAVE THE DAYS OF THE YEARS OF MY LIFE BEEN, AND HAVE NOT ATTAINED UNTO THE DAYS OF 
THE YEARS OF THE LIFE OF MY FATHERS IN THE DAYS OF THEIR PILGRIMAGE. AND JACOB 
BLESSED PHARAOH, AND WENT OUT FROM BEFORE PHARAOH." GENESIS, XLVII. 8-IO. 



What an interesting historical group this text 
presents ! Pharaoh, and Jacob, and Joseph ! 

So different in circumstances and history ! 
Each with such marked individuality ! All des- 
tined to be considered representative men so 
long as humanity has its histories ! All destined 
to influence the character of men and the prog- 
ress of the world so long as humanity has sen- 
timents and aspirations. Let us regard them. 

The rirst is a king, the second a patriarch, the 
third a statesman. 

The patriarch is very old, the king is in his 
full manhood, the statesman is in his prime. 
The statesman is the son of the patriarch and 
the prime-minister of the king. 

The king is the sovereign of that weird and 
wonderful land of the Nile, the desert, the pyra- 
mids, the Sphynx and the singing statue of Mem- 
non ; the land of the mummies ; the country of 
one river and no roads. Egypt lies to us as a 
region between actual terrestrial landscapes and 
the fairy land of the poets. The time of this 
narrative seems like an intervention between the 
beginnings of the life of the race and its actual 
historical working period. Our imagination peo- 
ples the desert and the reedy river with chimeras. 
There on his barbaric throne, in low and strong 
and solemn palace, sat Pharaoh. 

Jacob had come from what all the world now 
calls The Holy Land, which lifts itself above 
Egypt into a clear light of fancy, and is the 
Land of Promise, its hills and valleys conse- 
crated by touch of angel feet, and its grave and 
noble patriarchs, too majestic for palaces, living 
in white tents under noble trees, on breezy up- 
lands, under a sky of singular clearness. 

This Pharaoh, now king of Egypt, had had a 
serious life in his grand old land, for a famine 
had been sore upon his people, and they would 
have perished if the great God were not accus- 
tomed to give kings and other leaders premoni- 



tions of His designs, and if that young governor 
who stands by his throne had not had the reli- 
gious spirit so as to be able to interpret the king's 
dreams and the executive talent so as to avert 
the dreaded catastrophe. 

And he, this Joseph, so strong and self-con- 
trolling, had saved the throne to the king and 
had bought all the land for him and had saved 
the people from the horrible death of starvation. 
Pharaoh had the position and glory of king, but 
the authority and influence rested with Joseph. 

The famine had crept up into Canaan and 
pinched the family of the patriarch Jacob, the 
father of Joseph, who had not known until lately 
that this son had been sold as a slave and been 
carried to Egypt and become the savior of the 
land. There had occurred that train of circum- 
stances, with which you who read your Bible 
are familiar, which had brought the patriarch 
Jacob in his old age from his beloved land to 
this strange country where his son stood near 
the king and directed the sway of the sceptre. 

It was quite natural that the monarch should 
desire to see the father of the wise and brave 
young man who had saved his kingdom for him. 
It was quite natural that the patriarch should 
desire to see a king, especially the king of Egypt, 
the monarch of the most noted kingdom of that 
day, the sovereign with whom his own son, his 
beloved, his long-lost Joseph, had come into such 
intimate relationship. It was quite natural that 
Joseph should desire to present his sovereign a 
father so venerable and beloved. And so, they 
met. 

We cannot tell the story in language more 
picturesque than Genesis : " And Joseph brought 
in Jacob his father and set him before Pharaoh : 
and Jacob blessed Pharaoh." All this is to the 
life. The courteous king, the venerable patri- 
arch, the proud and happy son ! We see Joseph 
coming with respect to the throne-room of Pha* 



How Old 



raoh, and on his arm his aged father, also prob- 
ably assisting himself with a staff, with heartfull 
joy at finding his son, with a consciousness of 
his own importance by reason of his age, his 
being at the head of a tribe, and his being the 
father of Joseph ; yet with respect for Pharaoh 
as king and grateful affection to him as the pow- 
erful friend of Joseph and the generous bene- 
factor of the whole family. 

"And Jacob blessed Pharoah !" The king 
would courteously receive such a benediction 
from such a man. He was struck with the aged 
appearance of Jacob, and the king addressed his 
venerable guest in the language of this text, 
" How old art thou?" 

Let us consider this question. 

It is a very common one. Almost the first 
thing we desire to know about those with whom 
we become acquainted is the age. We begin 
to conjecture it. Generally it is not very diffi- 
cult to determine. Time leaves its marks, and 
life's trials theirs. But there is a difference in 
men. Some grow old prematurely. The teeth 
decay, the complexion changes, the hair grows 
gray or disappears, the shoulders stoop, the 
gait halts, the elasticity is gone, long before the 
time allotted as the limit of life. 

Others transcend that limit, and yet their bow 
abides in strength, and the eye is not dimmed 
and the natural force is not abated. This was 
the case of Moses when he died at the age of 
one hundred and twenty years. This was the 
case of Joshua, who had borne the burden of 
administration for nearly half a century after the 
death of Moses, and who, at the age of eighty- 
five, could say, " I am as strong this day as I was 
in the day that Moses sent me : as my strength 
was then, even so is my strength now, for war, 
both to go out and to come in." 

But usually care and toil and pain age 
people rapidly. So do evil passions, hatred 
and deceit and avarice. So do undue indulgen- 
ces of the appetites. 

Few sights are more pitiable than that of 
young men standing at the doors of our hotels, 
drooping, sallow, with dim eyes under thickened 
lids, and flabby flesh in their cheeks, and a 
tremor in their hands, and a weakness in their 
knees, men whom wine and women and the 
gaming table, have made old before their 
time. 

Few sights are more noble than that of a hale 
and hearty and cheery old gentleman, bright 
without frivolity, dignified without stiffness or 
ostentation, very old and very young, a remem- 
brancer of other generations, connecting ours 



Art Thou?" 199 



with those that have gone before, a prophet of 
immortality, intimating that we may live for- 
ever. We bow to reverend old age. It has its 
immunities and dignities. And if it be holy, its 
benediction has a real value. 

The people of Canaan were an out-door race, 
and much more long-lived than the Egyptians. 
So when Pharoah saw Jacob, who in point of 
time was really older, probably, than any per- 
son Pharoah had ever seen, and who besides 
had had a life of trouble, disappointment, and 
anxiety, he must have seemed exceedingly old 
to the king, and he took the liberty which his 
rank warranted in inquiring the age of Joseph's 
father. 

Common as this question is in society, it is 
one of the most' deeply interesting to each 
human being. 

You must have noticed the surprise which is 
generally expressed at the announcement of 
any man's death. Death seems to us a dark 
miracle. We assume that we should live, and 
we wonder that any man ever dies. And this 
wonder seems instinctive. It is in face of the 
universal knowledge of universal mortality. 

But, when we come to think, then life is the 
strange bright miracle. It should be surprising 
that any born child lives an hour. It is a mar- 
vel that many live threescore years and ten. It 
is a wonder that some human lives endure a 
century. When we turn our attention to the 
delicate organization of the parts of the body 
absolutely essential to life, to the fact that some- 
times the least jolt flings us off from the track of 
life, and to the other fact that life often endures 
through assaults on it which seem necessarily 
fatal, the continuance of the human race is a 
protracted miracle. 

Consider the construction of a man's heart. 

This organ is so important that the least or- 
ganic disease interferes with all the functions of 
living, and even the sympathy of the heart with 
other portions of the system, when they are 
diseased, brings us pain, anxiety, and weakness. 
For our purposes to-day we need not make a 
scientific examination. 

Hidden away in each human body, here is an 
organ which is about five inches long and three 
and a half inches broad and two and a half 
inches thick. It has four moving cavities, in 
which are ten valves. These valves must not 
weaken at their hinges, and the closure of each 
in every part thereof must be perfect. There 
must be no flaw, no weakness, no irregularities. 
When the blood comes into the auricles, they 
drive it by regular contractions into the ventri- 



200 



'How Old Art Thou f 



cles, and these by regular contractions through 
the pulmonary artery and into the aorta, from 
which great artery branches wonderfully distri- 
buted and arranged carry the blood through the 
system. 

These contractions make what we call pulsa- 
tions. This circulation maintains life. Sus- 
pend these contractions one minute and the cir- 
culation is disturbed and agony and death soon 
ensue. These contractions are made with so 
perfect a regularity, that they are called the 
rhythmical action of the heart, by which the 
flow of the blood is measured, as the flow of 
music is, by beats. Eighty times in every 
minute does this " muffled drum" beat time for 
the march of life. This is the general average 
among men. In the case of a man who has 
lived his threescore years and ten, it has beaten 
three thousand millions of times, without stop- 
ping, day or night, whether the man has been sick 
or well, awake or asleep. It must go on. Go- 
ing on, we do not notice it. We are always 
better when we are not sensible of having a 
heart. If it becomes irregular nothing else can 
gain our attention. No song nor speech nor 
trade can interest us. Our thoughts fly to our 
heart. 

This little organ, that weighs about ten ounces, 
must receive and distribute a half million tons 
of blood in a lifetime. It is so small, so compli- 
cated, so wonderfully constructed, so delicate in 
some parts, so sensitive, so irritable ! Its sym- 
pathies are with all parts of the body and the 
mind. A plunge into a cold bath may congest 
it. Our thoughts hasten or retard its work. A 
sudden emotion may cause it to force the blood 
into the brain, or suck it in from parts where 
needed. 

Six men, it is said, died from anxiety caused 
last year by that " black Thursday" in Wall 
Street. A man in Boston, in a position of trust, 
robbed an institution of a large amount. His 
father, anxious for the reputation of the family, 
and not believing the report, went to him to re- 
ceive a denial, and when the son confessed his 
crime, his father fell suddenly dead at his feet. 
His heart was ruptured. A minister of the 
gospel was persecuted. He went away into what 
he thought was obscurity; but when the shafts 
of the archers reached him there, his anguish 
was so great that he fell and died. The post 
mortem examination showed that his heart was 
ruptured. 

Now think of the countless multitudes of great 
and sudden joys and sorrows and anxieties and 
shocks of human life, and that these shocks 



must be endured not by a shaft of granite but 
by a little sensitive organ, of thin walls and fine 
valves ! That we live while we sleep, that we 
live while we wake, is the most interesting phe- 
nomenon in all the physical works of God. 1 
do think that it is amazing that all this planetary 
system of ponderous orbs keeps its great motions 
through space, but that is not so profoundly in- 
teresting to me as the existence and the func- 
tional work of any human heart through a half 
century. I lay my hand upon my own, upon 
the breast which hides this little instrument, to 
whose music I have kept step from the first 
breath until now, and looking reverently up to 
God, and not knowing but that it may be shat- 
tered before I conclude my sentence, I exclaim : 

" Strange that a harp of a thousand strings 
Should keep in tune so long !" 

This question, which is interesting at all pe- 
riods of men's lives, grows more and more solemn 
as we grow older. Birthdays, anniversaries, 
meetings with those whom we have not seen foi 
many years, present the question silently to us, 
even when no one asks. 

It is the solemnity of memory. It turns us 
round to look over the region of existence we 
have already traversed, to behold its graves of 
buried loves, its withered rose-leaves of dead 
pleasures, its bare trunks of blighted hopes. 

It is the solemnity of responsibility. These 
years were given for our personal improvement 
and for work in behalf of the world. Each year 
should find us better, wiser, and stronger, more 
nearly ready for the life which is not measured 
by human calendars, and better able to dis- 
charge the duties of this present instant life. 
Knocking, knocking at the door, has Jesus 
stood, while all these pulses played. The 
Saviour has offered salvation and help. He has 
tenderly presented His claims. Oh ! the mem- 
ories of our great ingratitudes to God ! We ought 
to have been burning and shining lights. We 
knew that there was no recall to lost opportuni- 
ties. Our youth should have been sweet with 
piety, our manhood should have been great 
with activities, and the old age of those who are 
old should now be rich with great results. 

Unless a man be thoroughly hardened, the 
moment you ask him how old he is, Conscience 
begins to cry, " Yes : how old? You have some 
age. That means that you have had some time. 
That means that you will never have that time 
again. What have you done with the past? 
How old are you ?" It is a solemn reflection that 
never can a man give the same answer twice to 



"Row Old Art Thou?" 



201 



this same question. Each heart-beat changes 
the date. " I am older, older, older, older !" 
says the heart scores of times in a minute. How 
solemn ! Every moment brings a new responsi- 
bility as it arrives and creates a new memory as 
it departs. 

The question ought to create a solemn grati- 
tude. We have had so many opportunities, so 
many joys, a place in humanity, a space in the 
history of the race, space for work and success 
and high delights, space for growth and an op- 
portunity of beginning works that may go for- 
ward through eternity. 

We have no reason to regret that we are grow- 
ing old. It should be a subject of solemn joy. 
In any aspect the question is profoundly inter- 
esting and stretches its hands from the begin- 
nings of our existence out into the inscrutable 
future. 

Now let us consider the answer which Jacob 
gave to Pharaoh when he asked, " How old art 
thou ?" 

There is something very natural in the guile- 
less garrulousness of the aged patriarch. He 
lingers on his statement. He draws his words 
out and multiplies them as if he would indicate, 
in some way, the length of his life by the length 
of his reply. 

There are two periods of our lives at which 
we are proud of our age, when we are very young 
and when we are very old. You have probably 
noticed that if the little boy was four years of 
age yesterday he will tell you to-day that he is 
" going on five." He desires to be old. When 
men reach the meridian they linger. They do 
not desire to begin to go down hill. They know 
how rapid the descent is. But when men reach 
a great age, especially if they retain their facul- 
ties, they are proud of having survived all their 
earliest contemporaries, proud of having seen so 
much of the history of the present generation, 
proud of their number of years. The oldest 
man in a town or county feels the patriarchal 
dignity which his years give him. 

Jacob's answer was, " The days of the years 
of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty 
years : few and evil have the days of the years 
of my life been, and have not attained unto the 
days of the years of the life of my fathers in the 
days of their pilgrimage." 

It is to be noticed that he measures life by 
days. This answer reminds us of David's prayer, 
" So teach us to number our days, that we 
may apply our hearts unto wisdom." It is best 
not to take life in the lump, but to study it in 
detail. It is furnished us in that way. God 



never gives us a whole week at a time, nor even 
a whole day, indeed. Life is a contract for days' 
work. We cannot plan for long periods without 
considering the capabilities of each particular 
day. By doing so much a day, in a long life 
great results are secured. Write a page a day, 
beginning when you are twenty years of age, 
and when you are fifty you will be the author of 
thirty-seven volumes of two hundred and ninety- 
five pages each. It is an appalling thing to sit 
down to the writing of such a library as thirty- 
seven volumes, but it is not frightful to under- 
take to execute a page a day. Just so are our 
duties apportioned, no man being called to per- 
form anything beyond the work that is laid to 
his hand for the day. " The days of the years 
of my life" was Jacob's method of measurement. 

And then, having measured his life, he de- 
scribes it. He says: "Few have the days of 
the years of my life been." But he was a 
hundred and thirty years of age. He had seen 
more than fifty-seven thousand days. 

But he compared them with the ages of his 
fathers, and they seemed few. His grandfather 
Abraham had died at the age of one hundred 
and seventy-five ; but that was a brief life com- 
pared with many of the patriarchs, among 
whom were those ancestors of Jacob whose 
names and ages are recorded in the eleventh 
chapter of Genesis, all of whom were much 
older than Jacob, some nearly five hundred years 
of age, and one had attained six centuries, and 
that man's father was nine hundred and fifty 
years of age when he died. Compared with 
Noah, Jacob was as a boy ten years of age com- 
pared with a man who has attained seventy- 
three. He had aged early. In the former days 
of the family his ancestors had just began to 
settle down and be fathers at the age at which 
he was hobbling into the presence of Pharaoh, 
leaning on his noble son. 

Perhaps he compared them also with the 
great age of the world. I suspect that the men 
who lived near the origin of the race knew more 
of the physical history of the world than we do. 
It was lost in the spread of the race and in the 
dreams of the poeticalage, an age when human 
monuments had not begun to be and letters 
had not yet been invented; and we of the later 
and more scientific ages are compelled to spell 
out the history of the planet in the hiero- 
glyphics of the rocks. Perhaps Jacob knew that 
this was a very old planet, and certainly knew 
that the generation of man had been centuries 
before his time. 

"Few!" said Jacob. The word has the 



202 



Row Old Art Thou ?" 



sense of shortness. There is a difference be- 
tween, time coming and time past. We do not 
see the wings of Time as he comes. They be- 
come apparent when he turns his back. Antici- 
pation lengthens time ; memory shortens. Each 
year seems briefer than that which preceded. 
When you and I were six or seven years old, do 
you not recollect how long the Christmases were 
apart? They chase one another now. It seems 
like a dream since last summer to those of you 
who are a half-century old. When you were at 
college the summer vacations were very far 
apart. Looking at one hundred and thirty 
years after they had gone, Jacob said, "My 
days have been few." So will it be with us all, 
dear brethren, to whatever length of life we 
may attain. 

Compared with the solemn eternity, how 
short is our mortal career. How a century 
must dwindle in the distance, when discerned 
from some indescribably far-off cycle whose 
minutes are millenniums and one sweep of the 
pendulum of whose chronometer occupies ages 
for which the mathematics of humanity has no 
calculus ! 

So, when Jacob compared his one hundred 
and thirty years with the age of the world that 
is seen, or the duration of the world that is not 
seen, he pronounced it brief. 

To him it had another charateristic. It was 
evil. 

In some sense and in some measure the same 
word may be used of every human life. Is there 
any exempt ? No life is wholly evil, it is to be 
hoped ; but is any life wholly free from evil ? 
Whom does not sin touch, his own sin and that 
of others ? What life is flawless, painless, tear- 
less? But some men's lives are full of trials 
which never cease, however much they change 
their shape: and this is often true when the 
bulk and the result of the life is a success. It 
was so with Jacob. Instigated to lie by his 
mother, cheating his brother of that most pre- 
cious thing his birth-right, losing the confidence 
of his blind, old, bed-ridden father, driven into 
exile, a score of years a servant, deceived on his 
first marriage, broken of heart by the loss of a dar- 
ling wife whom he cherished, cursed with profli- 
gate children who repaid his treachery by deceit 
and by tearing his favorite son from his arms, per- 
plexed with domestic difficulties and beset with 
famine, breaking up his establishment in his old 
age and moved down to a new and unfamiliar 
country away from the graves of his fathers and 
his wife, this old man stood by the king with a 



biography whose lines were written in tears. It 
was a grave answer. Old men, you may no- 
tice, are apt to recollect their griefs and not their 
joys, the sepulchre of a buried love, not the de- 
lights of early affection. But it should not be 
so. A habit of regarding God's manifold good- 
ness would fill old age with a treasury of most 
blessed memories. And Jacob had had many a 
deliverance and many a favor to recollect. But 
we must allow for an old man who had had all 
his home sanctities violated and had just en- 
dured the bodily fatigue and mental worry of a 
long and painful removal. 

But there is another aspect in which he viewed 
his life, and one that is common to all men. 
Jacob describes his life as a " pilgrimage." 

It is not settled. Here we " have no continu- 
ing city." From our birth until our death the 
place where we shall sleep each night is very 
uncertain. All our appointments are contin- 
gent. There is only one thing sure, namely, 
' that we are passing on. There is no contriv- 
ance by which life can be stayed in its course. 
The supports of life are merely life's pilgrim 
staves. We may have a definiteness in our 
aim and be journeying to that city whose maker 
and builder is God; or, we may be wanderers, 
going hither and thither aimlessly, in promis- 
cuous painlessness ; but we are pilgrims. There 
is no rest nor peace nor stay. Even while 
we sleep we are carried forward. We are all 
pilgrims and sojourners as all our fathers 
were. The traces of their stages on life's pil- 
grimage have been obliterated. So will be 
ours. If in his slow eastern land and in his 
slow early age of the world life seemed a pil- 
grimage to Jacob, how much more aptly is it to 
be so described in this rushing age of the world ! 

It is the intention of our heavenly Father that 
life should be such. Our home is not here. We 
cannot use earth as a home. We mistake all exist - 
ence when we try to settle here. Earth is a via- 
duct and life a journey. We need only the con- 
veniences of a journey and not the comforts of a 
home. These last no money can purchase, no 
contrivance can procure. We are attempting to 
reverse all the plans of God whenever we endeavor 
to plant ourselves on earth as if to stay forever 
here. Whether he spread his tent in Gerar, or Pa- 
dan-aram, or Succoth, or Bethel, or Bethlehem, 
or Beer-sheba, or Egypt, Jacob knew that the time 
would come when he must pitch that tent across 
the river in a land which is visible only to faith. 

And this was life, as it seemed to Jacob in an 
hour of despondency, and as it now seems to so 



How Old Art Thou f 



203 



many, a brief and evil pilgrimage. But when 
Jacob came to die, to make his last removal, the 
remembrance of God's mercy overcame the re- 
membrance of his trials, and he died talking of 
better things, and with such words as these on 
his lips, as he laid his hands on his grandsons : 
" God, before whom my fathers Abraham and 
Isaac did walk, the God- which fed me all my 
life long, the Angel which redeemed me frofn all 
evil, bless the lads !" They were about to try 
that pilgrimage, those beloved sons of his be- 
loved Joseph. They might find evil in the way, 
and would. He had had evil. But he had been 
redeemed from it all. Yes, from it all. He was 
standing on the verge of the other life. He was 
then keeping all the good. The evil was van- 
ishing all away. 

Dear brethren, let us learn lessons from this 
question and from this great old man's reply. 
Let us learn how to estimate life properly. It is 
to be always remembered that a mistake on this 
subject involves a mistake on every subject. If 
I do not know what life is, how can I know the 
uses of joy and sorrow, of riches and poverty, of 
success and disappointment ? If I make a mis- 
take here I shall cling to the worthless as in- 
valuable and fling my best treasure away, I 
shall trouble myself about what should really be 
quite inconsiderable in my estimation, and shall 
have no care for what most deeply and perma- 
nently concerns me. 

Why, on a long journey, should I mourn a 
change of cars ? Is it not silly in me to become 
so attached to one carriage that I shall have all 
the grief of the breaking up of a home if I be 
compelled to take another carriage and another 
track in order to reach my real home ? Much of 
our grief in this world, dear brethren, comes of 
just that false estimate of life. We really need 
only what will put us forward on our journey 
and what we can carry home : we really need 
only what will help us toward heaven and what 
we can carry thither and can use in that blessed 
estate. All else is worthless. 

And now, to the consciences of the older 
members of my congregation I put all that is 
interesting and solemn in this question of Pha- 
raoh to Jacob. 

Some of you were active men of business before 
I was born. Your gray hairs have my reverence, 
and none the less because the almond-tree has 
begun to blossom on my own troubled head. 

Some of you " confess that you are strangers 
and pilgrims on the earth." Let me ask you to 
search your hearts and your history to know 
whether you behave as those should who make 



such a confession. What have you done with 
all those years that now seem few to you, but 
which at the time moved so heavily? You can- 
not recall them, but can you not bring from 
them what shall make all the remainder of your 
lives a rapid and happy journey to your home in 
heaven? 

Some of you stand quite on the verge of the 
land of the immortals and have made your pil- 
grimage with such deviations as human frailties 
cause in all, but steadily moving toward your 
homes. Perhaps before next summer, perhaps 
before another Communion, you will break 
bread in the Father's House. You cannot know 
how beautiful and cheering your old age is to 
us. It is a wonderful state of ripeness out of 
which any moment the flower of immortality 
may burst into bloom. May God bless you, and 
give us grace to walk in your steps as you have 
followed the Master ! 

What shall I say to those of you whose aged 
heads are not crowned with piety ? 

Some of you have had a hard life, crowded 
with fruitless labors and vast disappointments. 
And now you have no hope beyond. You cling 
to life, yet know that very shortly you must go. 
Will you lose both worlds ? If you failed to 
find your Bethel in the beginning of your ca- 
reer, will you not now, as if leaning on Jacob's 
staff, seek the guidance of Jacob's God? 

But some of you are rich and increased in 
goods and have abundant honors. And yet you 
are graceless and ungrateful sinners. O, it is 
dreadful that words of selfishness and wicked- 
ness should come out of a mouth that must so 
soon be gasping in death. It is dreadful to have 
been accumulating wealth and social influence, 
and not have used it so as to be able to give an 
account to God. Where have you made monu- 
ments memorial of God's mercy to you ? What 
have you done with all that God has given ? A 
few steps more and your pilgrimage will bring 
you in front of the judgment-throne. "How 
old art thou ?" may be the Judge's first question. 
The older you are, the longer you have lived on 
the earth, the greater your responsibility and the 
greater the guilt of your negligence. 

What must you do ! What must you do ? 
Come, be a little child once more before you die. 
Come, lay your hoary head in the arms of 
Jesus, those arms that held little children so 
tenderly. He will bless and forgive and comfort 
you, and give you treasure in heaven, and fill 
your heart so full of a strange celestial love that 
you shall feel as if you never were loved before, 
beca js^ His love is sweeter than the love of the 



"How Old Art Thou?" 



wife of your youth, and sweeter than your 
mother's love. O let all the short remainder of 
your pilgrimage be a straight road to heaven. 

I know how almost hopeless are appeals to 
the old. Habit, confirmed worldliness, dread 
of new responsibilities, and the power of old 
associates and old associations, keep them back 
from Jesus. Therefore the labors of the Chris- 



tian ministry are mainly with the young. But 
I make this appeal, if, perhaps, some of you 
will feel the need of praying God's grace to 
number you with His saints in glory everlasting 
when your fellow-men shall number you with 
those who have passed. With God all things 
are possible. May you this day prove the po< 
sibility of your own salvation ! 



n 



XXXIII. 

"HIM THAT COMETH TO ME, I WILL IN NO WISE CAST OUT." JOHN, VI. 37. 



THERE is something quite fearful in the power 
and responsibility of the human will. 
It is seen in this way. 

The manifest intent of God our Heavenly 
Father is that all His human children shall be 
saved ; saved from the direful effects of the poi- 
son of sinfulness which has come into our hu- 
manity ; saved, each man, from the effects of 
his own particular acts of sin ; and saved, which 
is better than all, from sinfulness itself. 

All the movements of the divine providence, 
as well as all the arrangements of the divine gov- 
ernment, go to show that. 

But the sublimest proof of it is shown in Jesus. 
The redemption that is in Him is the last and 
largest and most overwhelming proof of God's 
desire to save sinners. The Incarnation, the 
residence of God in human flesh and among 
human habitations — engaged in human pur- 
suits, sharing human sorrows, enjoying human 
loves — is part of this amazing movement for 
human salvation. 

The spirit of His mission was the spirit of 
persevering affection. " The Son of Man is 
come to seek and to save that which is lost." 

There is such a unity of purpose in the un- 
selfish design of the whole mission of the Son 
of God ! He turns from everything else, from 
creating worlds and from receiving the homage 
of angels, to devote the whole resources of God- 
head to the redemption of manhood. He does 
all that thought can do, all that love can do, all 
that spiritual power can do, all that suffering 
can do, all that life can do, all that death can do. 
He travels every avenue of life. He searches 
every depth of death. He reaches every height 
of eternity, filling ail things that He may save 
man. 

This we express in our " Creed :" " He was 
conceived by the Holy Ghost :" this was the 
divine process of projecting God into humanity. 
" He was born of the Virgin Mary :" this was 
the purest inlet into humanity by which God 
could enter. *' He suffered under Pontius Pi- 
late:" this embraces all that is terrible in His 



history of suffering, injustice, pain of body, an- 
guish of soul, condemnation, ignominy, being 
sent to death by the conquerors of His own 
people. " He was crucified :" the depth of hu- 
man shame and torture ! " Dead !" He touched 
the bottom of humanity, enduring its direst 
eclipse and failure. " He descended into hell :" 
that is, He was certainly dead, not in asphyxia 
or coma, not fainting or collapsed ; His soul 
passed out into the world of spirits, so that there 
was as complete a separation between His soul 
and body as it was possible to effect. " The 
third day He rose again :" came back to the 
body He had left in the grave. It was neces- 
sary that He should have left it there so as to 
have personal experience of all the acts and 
facts of dying, personal knowledge of all that 
dead men know. But He would not give up 
His human body, lest men might fancy that the 
tie between God and Man is temporary. He 
determined to show that it was perpetual. He 
made a human body the indestructible temple 
of the Eternal God, and is now as visible in it 
as He was when seen on Calvary or on the lake 
of Galilee, because " He ascended into heaven." 

We no longer lose ourselves in vague gazing 
into the dim and infinite inane. We address a 
person. Our God is a man, with body and 
parts ; with eyes that wept at the grave of His 
friends and looked lovingly on children and foi- 
givingly on sinners ; with hands that performed 
the offices of life, broke bread to the hungry, 
and caught the hand of sinking Peter and kept 
him up, and touched the hand of a dead girl 
and lifted her back to life ; with feet that walked 
our weary world-ways, and were stained with 
dust and sweat and blood, and which lay stiff 
and stark in a sepulchre. When men dislike 
Him and stay away from Him, He mourns, and, 
like a forsaken man, pathetically sobs, " Ye will 
not come to ME, that ye may have life;" but 
when men do come to Him, and love and trust 
Him, He has boundless joy, and shouts until all 
the angels in heaven know that the great God 
is in His divine ecstasies. 



206 Christ's 



All this work of the atonement is to bring 
man into such belief in God's love for him that 
man will love God. Man's love of God saves 
him from his sins. 

And yet it is in the power of each man to 
make the whole apparatus and work of redemp- 
tion of no avail so far as he himself is concerned. 
He may will not to come to Jesus, and that 
makes it as if nothing had ever been done to 
save him from his sins. Nay, more : Doing 
nothing accomplishes the same result. Staying 
from Jesus is the same as determinately resolv- 
ing not to go to Jesus. 

I say, then, that the fearful power and respon- 
sibility of the human will is seen in this, that any 
one man, the weakest and poorest of our race, 
has it in his power to set aside and cause to be 
of no avail, so far forth as he is personally con- 
cerned, all this immense arrangement of re- 
sources which connects itself with all the thoughts 
and works and history of God. 

It is a frightful fact. It is a necessity, if the 
will be free and virtue exist. So great is virtue 
in the sight of God that He constructed the 
universe upon the plan of the admissibility of 
evil, so that virtue might exist rather than have 
no evil and no virtue. That necessitates this 
dread responsibility of the will. There is a 
limit which God will never transcend. There 
man may plant himself. It is his castle. He 
may remain therein : God will never invade it : 
but man must take the consequences. 

God has done everything for our salvation 
that Omnipotent love can do. His work stands 
accomplished. Now, that it may be available to 
us, there is something for each individual of us 
to do. It is exceedingly simple. It is what 
every human being can do. Jesus describes it 
thus: " Come to ME." It seems to be as little 
as we can do : but it embraces everything. 

It declares our own utter inability to save our- 
selves. 

It pours contempt on all other saviors. 

It exalts Him into the very supremacy of 
Saviourhood. 

The fact is, that it is quite necessary first of all 
for a man to feel the absolute lack of saving 
power in himself, because his self-respect com- 
pels every man, that is worth anything, to do all 
he can for himself before he call on man or God 
to do anything for him. If a man can save 
himself it is a shame for him to seek the help 
of God. If a man can save himself, then the 
.vhole stupendous plan of salvation, as God has 
revealed it, is a vast engine constructed at 
countless cost and exhausting the resources of 



Fledge. 



God's intellect and love, to accomplish for man 
what can be done by man for himself. It is an 
astounding wastage of divine power. The very 
existence of God's special method is the most 
conclusive proof of man's inability. 

It is one of the curious and discouraging traits 
of human nature that we are prone to choose 
any other method of salvation than that which 
God's wisdom and love have ordained. We 
may come very near the divine Saviour, and yet, 
if there be anything close to Him to which we 
can attach ourselves, we are fain to choose it. It is 
on this propensity of human nature that priest- 
craft works. Hence we have sacramentism, and 
men are taught to regard Baptism and the Eu- 
charist as saving, and we are far more ready to 
receive these than to receive Jesus. It is much 
easier to practise priestcraft than it is to preach 
the Gospel. Even men and women of intelli- 
gence can be more readily brought to believe in 
;the saving power of water and wine and bread 
than induced to go at once to Jesus Christ. 

This probably comes from man's desire to 
have a very large share in his own salvation, if 
he cannot accomplish it himself. If he may not 
work out his own salvation independently, the 
man concludes to do so with helps, and these 
are taken as helps. 

It has thus come to pass that " the Church" 
and the Sacraments are in many a man's way 
of personal salvation. They keep him away 
from Christ. Until they can be seen to be 
utterly nothing without Christ, and not grace- 
making, and not grace-giving, but " means of 
grace," being His methods of imparting His 
favors to those who believe on Him, they are 
hurtful rather than helpful. Unless a man can 
go through them, and beyond them, to Jesus, 
they would better be out of the way. Come 
to ME !" the dear Lord says. And to Him we 
must go directly and immediately. 

Such an approach gives Him the greatest 
honor He can receive from a human being. It 
trusts Him. It says, My Saviour is so noble, so 
good, so true, so loving, so every way trust- 
worthy, that I may go to Him personally, just as 
I am, for what I need. Any other method of 
approach implies that He needs to be influenced 
to be merciful, that He is not, therefore, natu- 
rally merciful. It seeks a favor by first offend- 
ing. It is as when we approach a great man 
through another. We imply that that other is 
more regardful of our necessities than he is, 
and that he is not naturally disposed to be good, 
but can be induced to be good by the influence 
of a better man. 



Christ's Pledge. 



207 



Our blessed Saviour would more keenly feel 
such an implication than would any of the great 
of the earth. We honor Him by trusting Him. 
When we exalt Him to the supremacy of Sa- 
viourhood, we make the loftiest possible appeal 
to His goodness. 

And, then, we place ourselves before Him in 
a posture which'is most touching. We are alone 
with the Saviour. We have no interveners. 
And, as it is a case demanding mercy and not 
. justice, our very loneliness and helplessness in- 
tensify our appeal. 

" Come to ME !" says Jesus. 

Brother, go ! If you feel the load of sin, and 
its guilt, and its insolence, and its tyranny over 
you, go right to Jesus. Your mother cannot 
help you, except as she sends you to Jesus. 
Your pastor can be of service only as he can 
persuade you to go to Jesus. 

Remember, dear brother, that you do not ap- 
proach Jesus on some bare idea of His general 
goodness. You go to Him with His own pledge 
in your hands, and that pledge is His own most 
solemn promise. 

This is His promise : " Him that Cometh 

TO ME, I WILL IN NO WISE CAST OUT." 

In the first place of all, you perceive you 
are distinctly included. There can be no other 
human applicant having greater claim to the 
fulfillment of this promise than you. " Him 
that cometh" means that the fact of' coming 
establishes the claim. You do not .have to go 
and then show that you had a right to go to 
Jesus. The going makes the right. Your 
going to Jesus binds Him in the bonds of His 
own veracity, and it is of His own free-will and 
accord that He has placed Himself in position to 
be thus bound to a sinful suppliant. When men 
come to feel their sinfulness, they feel that such 
graciousness cannot be for them. But you per- 
ceive that this word of Jesus includes yon, and 
that it was spoken so that you should have 
something more than your own ideas of His 
goodness to go upon — that you should have per- 
sonal assurance that He means to be gracious to 
you personally. 

If you have passed from that to the thought 
of your having overcome all obstacles and flung 
yourself on the mercy of Jesus, you have felt 
that if your case received His consideration it 
would end in your being rejected. But Jesus 
destroys that apprehension by the breadth of 
His assertion, " I will in no wise cast him out." 
You have feared that when you came to Jesus 
something might occur, some reason might 
arise, which would cause your rejection. 



But you see how completely Jesus answers 
that by telling you that when you have once 
come, when you have done all you can do — and 
you must do that — then no circumstance, new 
or old, no reason, no combination, no occurrence 
shall have any such effect upon Him as shall 
result in your rejection. That the faith of trem- 
bling penitents may be encouraged and con- 
firmed, let us examine this most blessed and 
precious promise in several aspects. 

I. It affirms that no reason in Himself shall 
lead to your rejection. 

This has been a source of great concern to 
you. The more you have studied His divine 
attributes the more you have feared to come. 
But He knows Himself better than you can 
know Him, and He knows the case that will be 
brought to Him, and He declares in advance 
that nothing shall arise out of the infinite depths 
of His divinity to make Him reject an approach- 
ing human suppliant. 

His attributes have frightened you. You have 
dwelt upon them in their infiniteness. You 
have considered His holiness, so sublime and 
awful, standing in such contrast with all the self- 
ishness and self-indulgence and the sinfulness of 
man in general and of yourself in particular. 
How could you dare to lay your spotted soul be- 
fore His ineffable and immaculate purity? What 
sympathy can He have with a sinner, seeing 
how He hates sin ? He is all truth, and yours 
has been a life of deceit : how can you come be- 
fore His presence ? He knows all things : how 
can so frivolous a being arrest the attention of 
the Omniscient favorably ? He is the very es- 
sence of justice and righteousness : if you were 
judged by that righteousness you would be con- 
demned : you dare not throw yourself upon His 
abstract justice. If there be no provision to 
save you, justice demands your destruction. 

And as you think on these things your cour- 
age fails you more and more. The very name 
God, which should be to all His children the 
synonym of all good, comes to be associated 
with thoughts that frighten, so that, while you 
dare not think of Him as bad, He is to you 
just less terrible than the Devil. 

Jesus scatters all those thoughts by the assu- 
rance that whatever may be the attributes of 
Divinity, He, who knows them all, knows that 
there is really nothing in them to prevent a kind 
reception of a suppliant who, in good faith, ac- 
cepts His offer of mercy. Now this assurance 
is either true or false. Jesus is God, manifest in 
the flesh, as the Scriptures declare. God is in 
Christ, as the Apostle affirms. No man know- 



W8 Christ's 



eth the Father but the Son, is the declaration of 
Jesus. And Jesus says, " Him that cometh unto 
ME I will in no wise cast out." To believe 
this to be false is to believe God a liar, and to 
make an end of all moral government. To be- 
lieve this to be true is to cast away all fear that 
there is anything in God's attributes to make us 
afraid to approach Him in penitence. 

But then, you call to mind all the fearful 
threatenings of God as recorded in the Holy 
Scriptures. They are terrific. If any individual 
should make a full realization of the import of 
the utterances of God against sin, and then con- 
centrate them in himself personally, they do 
seem able to drive him to madness or despair. 
But remember, that Jesus knew them all, and 
knew all they meant to the mind of God, and 
knew all God's capabilities of putting them into 
effect, and understood their connections and the 
intent of uttering them ; and, with all this knowl- 
edge, He affirms that there is nothing in the 
threatening of God which can make Him cast 
you out when you come. 

And, if you examine them, you will perceive 
that they are launched against sin, the thing 
which God's soul doth hate, and not against the 
sinner, the person whom God's soul doth love 
with infinite and everlasting love. It is only 
while the sinner clings to sin and identifies his 
spiritual fortunes with rebellion against his 
heavenly Father that he stands in peril of re- 
ceiving in his own person the bolts that are shot 
against sin. The very moment you abandon 
sin by pleading to be received into the arms and 
love of the Saviour, that very moment you take 
His side against sin, and are in no more danger. 
The announcement of the penalty has no terror 
for the forgiven, and a hearty and sincere com- 
ing to Jesus for salvation vacates every threat of 
God, so far forth as you are concerned. 

So you perceive that Jesus meant that there 
was nothing in the character of God, and noth- 
ing in His recorded words, to keep any sinner 
from his Saviour. 

Perhaps you have conjectured that there 
might be some reserved knowledge in God, as 
to His own character, or as to His wide and 
grand government of a universe which seems 
measureless, something connecting itself with 
eternity, some lofty and inscrutable state-reason, 
which may stand against His nature and His 
written words, and stand for your condemnation ; 
as in the government of earthly kings state-rea- 
sons sometimes control the nature of the sover- 
eign and violate all his pledges. 

Anticipating every conjecture of your fear, 



Pledge. 



your moral cowardice, your unbelief, Jesus 
sweeps the universe of space and the eternity of 
duration, in all its possible connections with God, 
and declares that no reason can arise in Himself 
or from Himself to prevent His gracious recep- 
tion of a sinner who comes to Him. Could He 
give a more complete and binding pledge of 
mercy than this ? 

II. But your poor heart turns upon itself and 
says, " O yes, all this is true and God is true, 
and He is good, and Jesus did utter these gra- 
cious words, and it is a shame to doubt Him ; 
and I will not believe that there is anything but 
good in God : but I cannot carry to Him such a 
creature as I am !" 

Then, you suppose that if you come to Jesus 
you may be rejected for some reason, not in God 
but in you. What can that reason be ? 

Perhaps you review your past history and 
remember that you have gone astray from your 
birth. It is a bitter and black record of all kinds 
of ingratitudes, rebellions, and blasphemies. 
You have violated the sanctity of every relation 
and engagement of life. You have arrayed 
yourself against all God's government and provi- 
dences and mercies. Perhaps you sometimes 
feel as if the Prodigal Son among the hogs was 
sweet compared with you, and Manasseh in his 
excesses a saint. 

And, all this may be quite true. But Jesus 
has known it all. He has watched every step 
and regarded every emotion. He that saw Na- 
thanael under the fig-tree has seen you in every 
posture of your life. If you come to make full 
confession to Him you cannot tell Him what He 
does not know. If your heart condemns you, 
God is greater than your heart and knoweth all 
things. You may have forgotten the motive 
and the method of many an act. But Jesus has 
not ! He knows more about you than you know 
about yourself. It was in full view of this re- 
membrance of all your past black history that 
Jesus uttered the assurance to you, " Him that 
cometh to ME, I will in no wise cast out." Noth- 
ing shall be brought up out of your past lives to 
cause your rejection if you come to Jesus for 
salvation. 

The same holds good to dissipate other doubts, 
doubts founded on your present state. 

The thought of your weakness embarrasses you. 
You know how sin has enfeebled all your moral 
powers. You are afraid to start for fear you 
will fail to go. You fear to go lest you faint 
when you reach the Saviour. You fear to offer 
yourself because you will be such a poor, weak, 
worthless, down-falling, back-sliding follower. 



Christ's Pledge. ' 209 



Do you suppose that Jesus does not know 
that ? If you were not weak you would not go 
to the strong for strength. He invites you to 
come to Him that He may give you strength 
and salvation. It is not altogether for His sake 
that He solicits your coming. It is for your 
own. He desires to give you moral power. He 
cured paralysis, and set weak ankles to vigorous 
dancing, in the days of His visible sojourn 
among His children. It was typical of the infu- 
sion of spiritual strength into souls weakened 
by sin. You may not be able to stand in the 
presence of the great King. You may fall in 
utter helplessness at His feet and not be able to 
rise. But His strength shall be made perfect in 
your weakness. He knows your utter inability, 
and yet He assures you that if you will come to 
Him, He will not cast you out because of your 
feebleness. 

This same assurance should destroy any doubt 
which you may have by reason of your sinful- 
ness. You never feel that sinfulness so much as 
when you are thinking of coming to Jesus ; do 
you ? Then it becomes fearfully oppressive. 
At other times you have little consciousness of 
it. The very reason for coming to the Saviour 
now becomes to you a reason for staying away. 

But recollect how divine love has " come" 
before it has asked you to " come." The mis- 
sion of Jesus is the salvation of sinners. The 
name He bears is a perpetual proclamation and 
assurance of His mercifulness : He is called 
Jesus because He saves His people from their 
sins. 

If all who are sinners stay away from Him, 
His mission will be a failure and a nullity. He 
can never be a Saviour unless sinners come to 
Him. He made the declaration in the text to 
sinners because they were sinners, assuring them 
that their sinfulness should not cause Him to 
cast them out, the sinfulness which had caused 
Him to become "a Prince and a Saviour, that 
He might grant repentance and remission of 
sins." No sin no Saviour ! If the Saviour cast 
out sinners, whom will He receive ? 

But your faith is so small ! You have learned 
that according to your faith so shall it be to you. 
You have heard of the mighty faith of others 
who were converted. And, it is true that with- 
out faith it is impossible to please God. 

But think of this : your coming to Jesus is an 
act of faith. Who shall measure exactly the 
amount of faith needed ? Some have more 
trustful temperaments than others. Jesus knows 
that. He knows Thomas Didymus from Simon 
Peter, but numbers both among His disciples. 



A woman approached Him under the cover of a 
crowd and touched merely the hem of His gar- 
ment, and was instantly healed. He speaks of 
faith no larger than the grain of mustard-seed, 
and speaks of its mighty power. 

But His assurance is that no lack of faith shall 
keep Him from saving those who come to Him, 
and my work is to bring you to Him, and there- 
fore I am trying to show you that if you stay 
away for want of faith, it is no good reason, but 
a mere excuse. 

You say that your knowledge of the method 
of salvation is so scant that you are afraid to 
come. Does Jesus invite those who know to 
come? Does He say, "Him that cometh to 
me and can stand an examination in theology, I 
will in no wise cast out ?" No, but He does 
say that him that comes to Him, no matter how 
ignorant, He will in no wise cast out. Then a 
man's ignorance of God's inscrutable modes of 
administering a moral government which saves 
the law and saves the sinner, need be in no 
man's way. If you and I could know it all as 
well as God knows it, and did not come to Je- 
sus, we should be cast out ; but if in our igno- 
rance and blindness we do come, we shall be 
received. 

Remember, dear brethren, that this is a plain 
statement of Jesus, in the way of an invitation. 
Invitations avoid ambiguities. They are to be 
explicit. You must know at what hour your 
friend expects you to his entertainment, and 
whether you are to be present at a plain family- 
dinner or to meet a party in full-dress. Jesus 
invites you. It is quite clear what He means. 

If you begin to have theologic doubts, throw 
your theology away. Theology is a mere 
series of inferences by finite minds as weak as 
your own. Whatever theology stands in the 
way of this explicit assurance of Jesus must be 
false. You must read theology by the light of 
this assurance, not that plain, sweet, tender 
pledge by the light of theology. This pledge 
sweeps all away, for it says that whosoever comes, 
with whatever weakness, sinfulness, faithlessness, 
and ignorance, Jesus will receive him. 

There are some of you, dear people, who 
have some desire to come. Why do you not ? 

Let me present the assurance of my dear 
Lord to the children of my congregation. Some 
of you have, during the past year, become 
members of this church on a profession of faith, 
and I thank God for the grace He has given 
you, dear lambs of my flock, to keep you faith- 
ful. Others of you have told me that you 
sometimes wished you were of the flock of Jesus, 



210 



Christ's Pledge. 



but that you are " too little" and " too young." 
You are not too young to think of it and to 
talk of it. You are not too young to know 
that Jesus invites you to Himself. You are not 
too young to know, to feel in yourselves, that 
you have not yet put your whole trust in Him 
to save you both in this world and in the world 
to come ; and this is all that is meant by coming 
to Jesus. 

You are not too young. So soon as you are 
able to find in your hearts a need of something 
which the love of all your friends cannot give 
you, you are not too young to come to Jesus for 
that comfort. He adds a special invitation to 
children: " Let them come to ME!" I do 
earnestly pray the teachers in our Sunday-school 
to urge this upon their scholars, and to remem- 
ber that the success of a Sunday-school is not to 
be measured by its long roll of members and by 
the Scripture lessons committed to memory, but 
by the number of its scholars who come to Jesus. 

As I talk of these things, how you who are 
stricken in years wish you were tender-hearted 
and young again, and in the Sunday-school. 
Already you begin to despair. " Too late ! 
Too late !" " I'm too old !" You have not the 
courage to say this boldly out, but you are be- 
ginning to feel it. 



No. It is never too late, if you come. " Him 
that cometh to ME, however late, I will in no 
wise cast out." Only come ! Come now ! You 
are alive now. You are in some strength now. 
But your bow may snap in an instant. Gather 
up all your remaining strength and come now. 
For threescore, it may be fourscore, years, you 
have had one excuse after another. Be done 
with excuses. Jesus will not argue with you. 
He will only love and save you. Old as you are, 
you are not too old to make new investments, 
and enjoy new pleasures, if they come." How 
can you put off your salvation with the plea, 
against yourself, of "too old!" Now say, and 
let it be descriptive of your action, 

" Just as I am — poor, wretched, blind ; 
Sight, riches, healing of the mind, 
Yea, all I need in Thee to find, 
O Lamb of God, I come, I come. 

*' Just as I am — Thy love unknown, 
Has broken every barrier down ; 
Now to be Thine, yea, Thine alone, 
O Lamb of God, I come, I come." 

And may you hear the musical voice of mercy 
from the lips of Jesus, saying, " I will not cast 
you out !" 



XXXIV. 

Wkt fasst. 

"GOD REQUIRETH THAT WHICH IS PAST." — ECCLESIASTES, HI. 1 5. 



However it may be with the great Creator, 
to intelligent creatures all duration, in which his- 
torical existence is possible, divides itself into the 
present and the past. 

We have the present in our consciousness, 
the past in our memory. The future exists for 
us in our faith and hope. 

The present and the future are measureless. 
Only the past has measure. 

The present is measureless because it is always 
becoming the past. It is a mere line over which 
the future passes and becomes the past. We 
can make it neither larger nor smaller. We 
call it a moment because it is a movement, a 
mere movement of the future into the past. 

And yet, on our treatment of that moment 
everything depends. We can do nothing in the 
past. We can do nothing in the future. How- 
ever near the past may be to us we cannot touch 
it, nor can we touch the nearest future. They 
are both equally beyond our power to change. 
We have only the present, and while we have it 
we are ceasing to have it. It does not stay. It 
is something always going. And yet all that 
men do, to make the past a storehouse of mem- 
ories, successes, and happiness, must be done in 
the present. It is really all we have. It be- 
comes awfully and sometimes fearfully impor- 
tant as we consider its narrowness, the speed with 
which it escapes us, and the fact that whatever 
we do for ourselves and for our race, for time 
and for eternity, must be done in the present ; 
that in the present all history has been made, — 
all thought, all feeling, all action are had. It is 
a point of time, but toward that point all the 
vast future comes, with all its tremendousness. 
It is the marvel and puzzle of existence. 

The Future, incomprehensible to the judg- 
ment, measureless to the reason, sublime to the 
imagination, runs through the present, which is 
also measureless because it is so small, and hav- 
ing concentrated itself in The Now, expands 
itself into The Past. 

The Past grows ceaselessly. It is never so 
small as it has been. It can never have com- 



pleteness, can never be full and be done. It 
grows at every heart-beat, at every thought, at 
every movement. It is a pyramid of perpetually 
expanding base, and ascending altitude, and 
increasing bulk, the product and the memorial 
of countless Nows. It is secure while man or 
while God has memory. It has a history. It is 
history. 

The Future is uncertain. The Present is 
fluctuating. The Past is secure. 

We take the Future into the Present for use. 
We put our Present with the Past for preserva- 
tion. It is our treasure-house. It is a growing 
wonder. 

And how wonderful is the Future ! we say 
"is," whereas in reality it is not. It seems 
nothing and everything. We cannot draw upon 
it, and yet we know that it is exhaustless. It has 
not begun to be, and yet it is the field of our 
fears, the husk of our hopes, the basis of our 
immortality. There could be no present and no 
past but for the future, and yet it can have 
reality only to faith. 

It is the subject of the greatest curiosity to 
man. In all ages magic and witchcraft have 
endeavored to throw the image of the future on 
the curtain of the present, and men have stood 
breathless before that which seemed to show 
what the future will be when it shall become the 
present. And yet it is utterly inscrutable. 
We cannot penetrate the nearest future with the 
vision of even the sharpest sagacity. God's 
unrent and unlifted curtain veils it. 

Even with the assistance of laws and the 
knowledge of laws we cannot predict anything, 
because there are so many more things unknown 
than are known that it is wholly out of the power 
of human beings to forecast any event. A trusty 
weapon, well loaded, well capped, with trigger 
set, held in the strong hand of an angered man 
and planted against the breast of his enemy with 
the evident intent to kill him, would seem to 
give us the assurance that in the next minute 
there would be a homicide. And yet it may 
not occur. No one can tell what physical and 



The Past. 



metaphysical reasons may occur to set the victim 
free, to change the purpose of the armed man, 
or to make his fire fail. 

We cannot tell what will be next, and next, 
and next, and so forward in the endless chain 
of successive events. But this we know, that 
there will always be the present and the past, 
and we believe that there will always be the future. 

The past is limited by its beginning, and by 
the present. The future is limited by the 
present, not otherwise. There will always be as 
much present and" future as there are now, and 
always more and more past. 

And this we know, still further : that the future 
makes the present. There could be no present 
if its thither side were not limited by the future, 
and if the future were not perpetually engaged 
in the work of changing itself into the present, in 
which it cannot abide, that it may go over to the 
past, where it may abide forever. So the future 
makes the present. 

And this we know, still further : that the pres- 
ent makes the past. The character of each 
man's past is determined by the character of his 
present. Events that have come cast their sheen 
or their shadows behind. We begloom or glorify 
our past by the style and conduct of our living in 
the present. 

There is a sense in which the past is inexor- 
able. We cannot call it back to change its form 
or color. There it stands. We can only send 
to it the brightness and goodness of the present, 
to be added to its already existing elements, and 
to modify the average character of the great 
total. 

There is a hallucination to which we are all 
liable, and of which we must disabuse our minds. 
It is that that the past has gone forever, been 
driven quite away, that all our lives which we 
have lived, all we have endured and enjoyed, all 
our success and failures, have gone forever from 
us, that the past is a bottomless well down which 
they have been dropt to be brought back to us 
no more, that we have no more connection with 
the Past and need have no more concern about it. 

Alas ! and oh ! if this were the truth. 

Alas ! for then " the tender grace of a day that 
is dead would never come back again." Alas ! 
for then our lives and joys and brave doings and 
courageous bearings would all be lost. Alas ! 
for then life would be a continual burying of dead 
beauties which should have no resurrection; we 
should then have only the slender present and 
the unknown future. The thing of beauty would 
be a joy nevermore, and there would be no pleas- 
ures of memory. 



And oh ! if it were so ! Then the murderer 
would have interred his victim out of the sight 
of God, out of the sight of men, out of the sight 
of conscience. The thief would enjoy his treas- 
ure, the corrupt official who has battened and 
fattened on the body politic he has robbed would 
enjoy his ill-gotten gains in goodly mansions, 
for the theft would never come back again. The 
liar would know that his lie had died in silence 
and had been buried in oblivion, and never come 
tangling about his feet again. Then there 
would be no more guilt. 

But all this is not true. If it were, then each 
one might exclaim 

" I am ! how little more I know ! 
Whence came I ? whither do I go ? 
A central self, which feels and is ; 
A cry between the silences ; 
A shadow-birth of clouds in strife 
With sunshine on the hills of life ; 
A shaft from Nature's quiver cast 
Into the Future from the Pastj 
Between the cradle and the shroud 
A meteor's flight from cloud to cloud." 

But this is not true. The past is not lost but 
treasured. It is the secure part of our posses- 
sions. It is that which we shall meet again, 
and for which we shall as keenly feel our respon- 
sibility as Ave do for that which we are now vol- 
untarily making what it is, to remain such when 
it falls into the coffers, the shut and tight-bound 
coffers, of the past, which no skill nor force of 
man can enter, but of which God carefully keeps 
the keys. And the text says, " God requireth 
that which is past." 

It may be profitable to us to stand with faces 
to the past and think how God " requires" it. 

I. It must be quite clear, from what we know 
of the moral government of God, that He now 
requires and will hereafter require the past at 
our hands, in the responsibility to which He now 
holds us and must forever hold us, for our stew- 
ardship. 

This must cover all the active and responsible 
parts of our existence. 

It must be as true of our intellectual culture 
as of any other department of our exertions. 

We are not only bound to think, but to think 
more and more clearly, more and more pro- 
foundly, more and more widely, more and more 
logically. We are responsible not simply for the 
exercise, in each present, of all our faculties of 
the mind, perception, comparison, ratiocination, 
memory, and imagination, but for having all 
these improved for the next present, and the 



The Past. 



218 



next, and so on, forever. We are to grow, first 
as vegetables and animals grow, for which we 
have no responsibility, but the very moment we 
perceive that there is a way of using our minds, 
in which they shall merely discharge their func- 
tions, and then that there is also another way of 
using our minds that they shall both discharge 
those functions and be no weaker, be not so 
weak, nay, be stronger than they were before, 
then there comes upon us the responsibility of 
something beyond mere intellectual activity, and 
that is intellectual culture. It should have been 
carried forward by us in every " present" which 
has now become the past. 

And this responsibility does not rest upon pro- 
fessional and scholarly persons alone and upon 
people of elegant leisure, but proportionately on 
every man in every walk of life. For, books, and 
business, and nature, are merely the objects on 
which thought exerts itself. Beyond what is nec- 
essary, intellectual action, to meet just the de- 
mands of the present, we are bound to enlarge 
and strengthen all our faculties in every direc- 
tion, that we may be able in each new present to 
do more things, and do them more easily, and 
more gracefully and more grandly, than we could 
have done in the next preceding present which 
has just become the past. 

At this moment you and I stand fronting the 
next immediate future. What we shall do with 
it, what kind of past we shall make of it, depends 
largely upon the strength of our intellect, and 
the skill we may have acquired to employ that 
strength usefully. If we can do no more with it 
than we could have done if it had met us ten 
years ago, we are not only weak but we are cul- 
pable. If we can no more detect error, spe- 
ciously enrobed in the garments of truth, than 
we could years ago, we cannot plead, what child- 
hood can, our inexperience. We cannot say that 
we must not be held responsible for our mis- 
takes, because, although we cannot see we might 
have made ourselves capable of seeing ; and God 
requires that which is past, holds us responsible 
now for just such intellectual efforts as we might 
perform if we had conscientiously trained our 
faculties in all the past. 

2. The same is true of our moral growth. 
The power to be good by resisting evil is one 
which can be as much cultivated as the intellect- 
ual faculty of comparison or of memory. Every 
yielding to what we know to be wrong weakens 
us for the next attack, and causes us to yield 
more easily, until we become absolutely power- 
less before the evil. Every resistance gives us 
not only a blessed memory in the past, but now, 



at this present, more moral strength, greater 
power to conquer, a fine habit of virtue, until 
being good comes to be a second nature. 

When a temptation assails us now "God re- 
quires that which is past," that past culture of 
our moral nature which should have made it so 
stout that the assaults of the temptations are 
powerless as against us. If we fall we are not in- 
nocent unfortunates : we might have been strong 
enough to stand. It is our fault that we are not. 
In the beginning God requires of us only what 
He has given us ; but afterward God requires of 
us what we might have gained for ourselves. 

There is that in every man of which I have 
often spoken to you, and which seems more 
marvellous and admirable whenever I think of 
it, his capability of modifying other souls. 

This is a God-like endowment, and none but a 
God conscious of His infinite capabilities of man- 
aging the universe, conscious of His supreme in- 
fluence, would have begotten children who inher- 
ited this august capability of influencing others. 
I am so used to influencing others, and being in- 
fluenced by them, that I cannot at all conceive, 
and yet I suppose it may be among the possibil- 
ties that some one else can conceive, how a man 
might be a son of God and yet destitute of in- 
fluence. 

In that case he would seem to me to be only 
a creature. 

This book which I lay upon this pulpit has no 
influence on the pulpit, nor has the pulpit on the 
book. These are only creatures. But I cannot 
step up to this place and look down into the 
thousands of eyes before me and go away with- 
out being changed and without leaving you all 
changed. You change the intellectual and moral 
condition of every soul you pass on the crowded 
Broadway or who see you in your drive through 
the Park. Then, every spoken word works its 
change, and every transmitted thought produces 
its change. 

Your whole past life is much to yot(, and who 
can calculate how much it is to thousands of dead 
people and thousands still alive ? 

All people yet alive who have had any inter- 
course with us are this day intellectually stronger 
and morally better for our influence. These 
people are reproducing it in ten thousand differ- 
ent directions at once, as we are reproducing 
their influence on us. We are what we are 
partly by reason of the influence of all our ances- 
tors and all our acquaintances. Of them and of 
us, "God requires that which is past." 

It seems to me no man can renew his past 
life, not Moses, nor David, nor Paul, without a 



The Past. 



shudder. They and you and I have freighted 
barks and set them on the seas, vessels which 
we know cannot be lost, but which will drift 
or steer to other lands to unload what we have 
given them, and multiply our presence and 
influence in many an unknown and far-off 
country. 

O where are they, the earliest playmates, the 
earliest little lovers, the earliest pupils? How 
weak or strong because of us ! How many of 
them achieved splendid moral victories because of 
strength we gave them? How many of them 
sank conquered in some battle because it came 
upon them when they were feeble with the moral 
weakness wherewith we weakened them ? We 
might have made all our lives strong and good, 
we might have the sweet certainty that whenever 
any image of our minds or hearts had been re- 
produced they would be pictures of goodness. But 
it is past, past not lost, all the more certainly not 
lost because it is past, and over the whole the 
finger of truth has written " God requires that 
which is past." 

II. If you will look into some Reference Bibles 
you will see in the margin "bringeth back" as 
another version of " requireth." It is thus that 
God makes us to know that the past is not lost, 
and that He has remembrance of it, and that thus 
He requireth it. 

By the whole constitution of man, by all the 
arrangements of government in the universe, so 
far as we are able to see and read them, the 
Heavenly Father makes us sensible of the action 
and reaction of the past, the present, and the 
future. 

I. If what has past is actually lost out of the uni- 
verse, and is therefore of no use, of no influence 
on the present or the future, and therefore of no 
appreciable effect in determining the destiny of 
men, then the existence of memory in man — not 
to say in God — seems wholly useless. Nay, the 
very existence of memory, and the constant mod- 
ification which it produces on the present of 
each intelligent individual, is powerful proof of 
the continued existence of the past. 

If my past exists nowhere else, I have perfect 
consciousness that it exists in my memory, 
which, although it may seem sometimes sleeping, 
because of the pressure of the present, I know to 
be alive and to be keeping watch and ward over 
all my past, sometimes becoming importunate 
and reading aloud to me passages in my own 
history which I would fain annihilate. Is not 
that your experience? If it were not a reality, 
would God thus require it of us ? Would any hu- 
man being ever be in the condition of the Greek 



philosopher who, to one that proposed to teach 
him mnemonics, replied, "I would rather pay 
you to teach me to forget?" 

What scourges memory puts into the hands 
of conscience ! Even when men are penitent 
and faithful, and feel that they have the Fa- 
ther's forgiveness, how the memory of the past 
stands before them, warning them and keeping 
them humble by its bitter story of even pardoned 
sins. 

On the other hand, the pleasures of the remem- 
brance of well-used opportunities, of successful 
cultivation of the powers, and of a happy influ- 
ence on our human brothers, are dear prophets 
of those immortal rewards the Father will be- 
stow when He requires the past, rewards that 
spring out of the past itself, sweet and perpet- 
ually produced fruitage of seed-sowing in the 
Long Ago. 

2. The Past is brought back and required of 
us in its influence on our present and future. 

A man must carry his whole past at every 
step, must carry it as a burden or as wings. It 
is perpetually retarding or advancing us. The 
business operations of yesterday so work them- 
selves into all our plans and efforts of to-day, 
that we cannot begin each day as if it were a 
totally new and isolated existence. What we 
have made or lost will aid other gains or necessi- 
tate other losses. 

Sometimes an act in the past has become so 
forgotten that it is to us as if it had never been, 
when suddenly it confronts us and defeats us in 
some great pitched battle of life. On the other 
hand, when we are stranded and our bark of life 
lies, with all its freight, wasting in the shallow, 
the simple little cup of cold water, given to a 
child in times long past, swells itself into a sea 
that tides us out into the ocean. Then " God 
bringeth back that which is past." 

3. There is another aspect of this fact which 
should be profitable. It is the influence of our 
own past on the present general condition of the 
world as reacting on ourselves. 

The world is our field. 

The same man could do a thousand-fold more 
in one century than in another. Regard the 
builders of the pyramids. Consider the age in 
which they worked. Compare it with ours, ours 
that has the examples, the stimulus, the expe- 
rience of all the preceding centuries. What 
might they not do now ? Men with just their 
intellects are doing so much more. Our neigh- 
bor, Prof. Morse, could not have had a vision of 
the telegraph if he had lived in the days of the 
Pharaohs. And if the Alexanders of the early 



The Past. 



215 



day had had the telegraph, perhaps they could 
never have conquered the world or would have 
made that conquest more rapidly. 

Now to you to-day the world is not what it 
would have been, if you had not been modify- 
ing its condition through the last score of years or 
the last half-century. Your past comes back to 
you in the present condition of all society and 
of the material condition of the planet, whether 
you be farmer or merchant, mechanic or scien- 
tist. 

In the department of thought, something you 
uttered thirty years ago may have kindled in 
another mind a light which his studies now 
reflect on your own investigation of some dark 
subject. 

The boy you taught in Sunday-school may 
have from you acquired such moral power as to 
remove out of the way of your greater operations 
for Jesus some obstruction which you could not 
have removed, but the removal of which gives 
you greater scope to work for the Master. 

In many ways in business and social life does 
God bring back the past, and in just so many 
ways as your sagacity or study may show you 
this, in just so many ways does the Heavenly 
Father give proof that " God requireth that 
which is past." 

III. The first result of the study of this sol- 
emn proposition should be to lead us to the 
greatest carefulness in the management of our- 
selves and all our affairs in the present. 

On that present we now stand, receiving the 
future and creating the past. It is our point of 
control. It is becoming the past as rapidly al- 
most as it becomes the present. But there is 
space aud power to touch the passing future and 
make it beautiful or dismal, beneficial or baleful, 
when it has become the past. 

We cannot now cause to cease to exist any- 
thing which has occurred in our history, nor can 
we go back and undo the deed or make the wrong 
of the past the right of the present. But it never 
would have been a wrong if it had not existed in 
some present in which we had complete con- 
trol over the character of the deed, when we 
might have made it good and chose to make it 
evil. 

It is profitable to consider that everything we 
do accomplishes two things: it makes the 
past, and it modifies the present. The pres- 
ent is the channel through which the future 
flows into the past, and that channel may be 
deep and wide, or shallow and narrow. Or, in 
another figure, it is the medium to which the 
future comes as a white light and through which 



it goes to the past, still a white light, or sadly 
stained, or clearly flung on the spectrum of the 
past in all the beautiful prismatic colors of the 
rainbow. Whatsoever we do is changing the 
channel and changing the medium, so that it 
thus doubly modifies our past. 

In this lies much of the value of character, 
and a man's character depends upon his princi- 
ples. We cannot better use our present than in * 
cultivating our characters by settling our princi- 
ples. An unprincipled man is creating for him- 
self a chaotic past, in which there are only such 
heterogeneous elements as come back upon him 
to confound him. And this fact is the basis of 
the profound saying of David, " In Thee have I 
put my trust, let me never be confounded," 
which simply means, that a man whose life has 
been a life of faith in God has a clear and con- 
sistent past, which, when God requires or when 
God brings back upon him, cannot put him to 
confusion. 

When we talk of principles we are never to 
forget that faith in God is the foundation of all 
great character, that all the "principles" of 
which any man can boast are really baseless 
structures unless they be built on faith in God. 
And this is one of the great uses of prayer : it 
brings us into such communion with God as to 
deepen our faith in Him, in all the justice, truth, 
and goodness of His infinite character. 

Out of a man's character flow his words and 
other acts. I say " other acts," because the utter- 
ance of a word is a deed, a thing done, which 
adds itself to the irrevocables. When our Sav- 
iour Jesus Christ says, "By thy words shalt 
thou be justified, and by thy words shalt thou be 
condemned," He gave no exaggerated impor- 
tance to words. A man cannot judge a fellow- 
man by a solitary utterance, it may be the prod- 
uct of hypocritical premeditation. But God 
can judge him even by that. And the sum total 
of all a man says in his entire lifetime is an ex- 
ponent of his character. Then, dear brethren, 
whatever we may say to one another, that seems 
to be a wise exhortation to be careful of our utter- 
ances, is it not much wiser to cultivate such 
truth and purity and goodness of character that 
we need not be nervously anxious about our 
words ? Make the fountain good and the stream 
will be good. But we must remember that every 
speech we have made to our fellow-men is doubly 
in the past, in our past and in their past, and 
God will bring it back in their present, that 
which is now present to them, or that which 
will hereafter be present to them, and God will 
require it of us. I know a person now dying, as 



216 



The Past. 



I believe, to whom no poisoned cup has been 
administered, on whom no physical violence has 
been exerted, but dying of words uttered, of 
words heard in high health and amid surround- 
ings of physical comforts, but words which, like 
a hot air, dried up the stream of life, of 
words that were not intended to be murderous, 
but have produced all the effects of assassination 
by slow poison. Although dissolved in the thin 
air, God will bring back those words to the 
utterers and require that life of the speaker of 
the words that killed. 

Now, what would be our condition if there 
were no element of mercy in the moral govern- 
ment of God, and no provision for forgiveness, 
for interposition, for redemption ? If there were 
no Saviour, who could endure the universe ? 
Grinding on and on and on, a huge mill with its 
everlasting thunderous clatter, grinding the 



future through the present into the past, and 
grinding back the past, bringing back that 
which was driven away, bringing it back to 
modify our present and future, oh ! who could 
bear this doom of life, if Jesus had not been 
exalted to be a Prince and a Saviour, to bear our 
griefs and carry our sorrows and create for us so 
splendid a destiny in the future, than when the 
Past is brought back our heavenly inheritance 
shines on it as the sun on dark clouds, making 
all golden ! Our faith in Him so changes our 
life, as a channel or a medium, that our past 
perpetually receives the modification of our 
characters, and as in the present, so in the past, 
old things have passed away, and all things have 
become new. 

Happy is the man whose past and present 
and future are trusted to the faithful hands 
of Jesus ! 



XXXV. 

(Sad U %*ti. 

"GOD IS LOVE."— I JOHN, IV. l6 



EVERY man who knows much of himself is 
conscious of a double life, an outward history 
and an inner character. 

Every faithful inspection of our fellow-men 
satisfies us that that is true also of them, of 
which we are conscious, that they have this dou- 
ble living, outward living as toward the world, 
and inward living in their several characters. 

As a general rule these correspond. What a 
man is inwardly he comes to be outwardly. What 
is true of the vegetable world, that the germ has 
a sheaf that corresponds to itself, and the same 
kind of germ has the same kind of covering, is 
true also of man. We find this everywhere in 
material objects and in human beings. 

And yet these do not always strictly corre- 
spond. A man's outside does not always seem to 
be in exact accord with his inner self. The Latin 
poet's ideal of a full and complete man is " a 
healthy mind in a healthy body." Esthetically 
that is true. But sometimes we find a soul all 
purity and sweetness and loveliness encased in a 
body deformed or tainted with a disease of the 
blood. Sometimes there are poets who never 
sing, " the mute inglorious Miltons," who never 
" build the lofty rhyme," heroic souls whose lives 
are tame and commonplace and lustreless, whose 
deaths are unmarked occurrences, whose his- 
tories find no historians. 

There are some who suffer repressions from 
the birth, on whose growth loads are piled, 
whose development into the outer life is perpet- 
ually afflicted by disturbing influences. There 
are some who have the germ of all goodness 
and beautifulness and truthfulness who are 
stunted early, who seem not to be able to grow 
in the ground of this world, who await trans- 
planting into a better soil, to expand under a 
better light in a more congenial atmosphere. 
There they will come to flower in a bloom which 
shall not be out of place even in the richest gar- 
dens of God. 

Each of us is unable to measure those disturb- 
ances in the other, and therefore the difficulty 
01 saying what a man really is. Even when the 



correspondence is complete, and a man's life is 
the outward and visible sign of an inward and 
invisible grace or gracelessness, as the case may 
be, we are often at a loss to know the real man, 
and our attempts to understand his character 
may fail on two accounts. 

In the first place, we may make mistakes in 
our most carefully taken observations. Our own 
faculties are limited. We have our failures of 
perfect sight, of perfect hearing, of perfect touch. 
We are not always able to see what a difference 
different angles of light in which an object stands 
make upon the picture which the object produces 
on our retina and our brain. Whoever examines 
photographs of familiar faces taken in the same 
room at the same hour by the same artist with 
the same instrument, must be struck by this. 
How much more when we make our observations 
on the actions of men, actions taken singly or in 
groups ! How much of the time of thoughtful 
people, who really above all things desire to 
know just what the truth is, is taken up in rec- 
tifying their own mistakes in observing the out- 
ward and visible life of their fellow-men ! 

In the second place, granted that the observa- 
tions are not only correct, but even accurate, 
how vicious our logical processes frequently are ! 
This is noticed in science. Generalizations are 
made from facts by one mind that thinks and 
are accepted by multitudes that do not. After- 
ward there comes along another thinker more 
familiar with the apparatus of logic, and makes 
another, a very different and a much better gen- 
eralization from the very same system of facts. 
When we see this occurring in the history of 
scientific progress, how it ought to give us mod- 
esty in our estimates of our judgment in other 
departments. 

Especially should this be the case in our seri- 
ous studies of those most solemn problems of 
our thinking life, problems that relate to the 
great God ! 

We know that our Heavenly Father is like 
His human children in this, that He has an out- 
ward as well as an inward life. " My Father 



218 



God is Love. 



worketh hitherto, and I work," says the blessed 
Saviour. God has expressed Himself in mani- 
fold forms of creation, in which He works, pro- 
ducing and reproducing, showing Himself in 
Matter and in Force, in the action of Force 
on Matter, and in the reaction of Matter on 
Force. 

He sets us down with our endowments face to 
face with all His outer life in the universe. We 
begin to observe. We begin to gather the facts 
of God, to record and to study them. We begin 
our inductions and deductions. We infer His 
attributes from His history, — His history in crea- 
tion, in government, in salvation, in His words 
to men and in His deeds toward men. 

There can be no failure of correspondence 
between what God is and what God does. There 
was nothing to confine, repress, or in any way 
disturb Him. He had the clear infinity of space 
and duration in which to work. What he does 
must be the accurate counterpart of what He is. 
If we make mistakes in our estimate of God, it 
must be because of the limitation of our faculties, 
of our capability of observing the facts in God's 
history, or of conducting correct processes of 
reasoning on those facts. The most sagacious 
of men have made mistakes in the one, the most 
powerful of men have erred in the other, the very 
best of men have blundered in both. The sci- 
ence of theology is as much progressive as the 
science of geology, both being attempts to sys- 
tematize our knowledge of God's acts and facts 
in two different departments ; but the acts and 
facts remain the same. 

Dear brethren, what each soul wants is to know 
what the very essence of God is. Scholars do 
well who do their best to make scientific prog- 
ress, but how few of us can be scholars ! Life is 
too pressing and too short. The urgency for 
bread is too great. For religious character and 
comfort and progress we need to know what the 
essential character of God is : for we must be 
religious, even if we cannot be wealthy and 
learned, and we must be religious even if we are 
wealthy and learned. 

How sadly simple minds are puzzled with some 
definitions that are given of God ! For instance, 
take that of one of the Catechisms, " God is an 
infinite and eternal spirit, one that always was 
and always will be." The little children stand 
up in church or school and repeat that ! What 
do they know, after they have said it ? What do 
their teachers know ? I recollect distinctly when 
I used to repeat that answer in the catechism to 
our pastor, and just as distinctly how I felt that 
therein I was not better than a trained parrot, 



and that the good pastor was never able to 
make me know what "spirit" or £i infinite" 
meant. 

Even now how little do I know more than that 
" spirit" is a substance that is not matter. I 
partly know what matter is, and that spirit is not 
the same. 

But, infinite ! we cannot comprehend that. 

We measure a mile on the surface of the earth. 
We take that arbitrary measure of distance and 
multiply it along a line which leads out from the 
centre of the earth anywhere into space, and 
millions, and billions, and trillions, and quad- 
rillions of miles, are tried to be conceived. We 
come at last to an amount of figures we can write 
upon a slate, but which no mind can comprehend 
as representing a line, and then we have reached 
the farthest world which can be made visible by 
the instruments we now possess. We believe 
that we shall see others when we have other in- 
struments ; but even then, if the whole space 
measured by a diameter twice that radius were 
covered with a circle of matter, which should be 
only the section of a globe, that inconceivably 
vast world would be but as a speck of dust in the 
infinity of space. Then, what can we know of 
the " infinite" space which God fills? 

We are as much baffled when we come to think 
of the " infinite" in duration. We take a com- 
prehensible portion of our life and call it a year. 
We multiply the years backward, doubling and 
trebling, and in manifold ways reduplicating the 
ages and cycles in our imaginations until we have 
carried ourselves back beyond the birth of worlds, 
until we have overloaded our minds and sink 
exhausted, and yet if God be infinite, we are no 
nearer an idea of His age than if we had at- 
tempted to measure it by a day. 

So, if we go forward multiplying our years 
along the future, flying on and on and on, until 
all suns and systems have grown old and died, 
until even the youth of immortality seemed 
hoary, bent, and aged to us, and add this to all 
the sums of the past we may have been able to 
figure to ourselves, God's life would still be as 
unmeasured by us as before we began the fruit- 
less effort of our thought. 

It does us no good to know where God is, nor 
when God is, nor how God is, if we really have 
no conception of what God is. 

To this the text helps, helps us in three Eng- 
lish monosyllables, easy of comprehension to any 
little child who has any thought and emotion. 
The whole essence of God is set forth in a sylla- 
ble, — LOVE. God is grand, but he is not gran- 
deur. God is powerful, but He is not power. 



God is Love. 



219 



God is wise, but He is not wisdom. God is holy, 
but He is not holiness. 

Little children have very indistinct ideas, as 
many adults have, of grandeur, power, wisdom, 
and holiness. But no one has an indistinct idea 
of love. If we know anything, we know what 
love is. There is no sane human being who 
does not know. That which is universally known 
by each individual's consciousness cannot very 
well be described or defined, and so the defini- 
tions of love in the dictionary are ridiculous, and 
in the highest works on mental and moral phi- 
losophy are unsatisfactory. It is a blessed fact 
that we do not need to be told what it is. 

Then, when we are told that God is love, we 
have a comprehensive theology, comprehensible 
by the whole race. It is the simplest sentence 
that can be constructed, and the most sublime 
revelation in all the universe. In it the lamb 
may safely wade and the leviathan freely swim. 
It is wonderful. It is the illumination of science, 
the solution to the riddles of the universe, the 
basis of all true thought, the foundation of all 
upbuilding, the bond of all catholicity, the crown 
of all consummation. 

In the light of this plain statement, which we 
can all understand, let us examine other things 
which we know about our Heavenly Father, and 
which we do not quite so well understand. 

L In the first place, the Majesty of God is the 
majesty of love. 

Our Father is King. He is " the King, eter- 
nal, immortal, invisible," as Paul sublimely says. 
David says, " The Lord reigneth : He is clothed 
with majesty." And again he says, " The voice 
of the Lord is full of majesty." 

Elevation of rank begets elevation of manners 
in right-minded human beings. They are lifted 
out of such petty personal cares as beset us, into 
a region of thoughtfulness for millions. They 
cannot suffer the interruptions which break in 
on ordinary citizens. And so in a sense they 
are removed above the mass. And so there is a 
majesty that doth hedge a king. -According to 
his power, his greatness of character, his im- 
mense resources, and his reserve of manners, the 
majesty of a king is awful. When seen at a dis- 
tance, surrounded with his guards, men look at 
him with awe. The thought of such power in 
human hands fills them with that feeling of min- 
gled reverence and fear which we call awe. 

When men contemplate the grandeur of the 
King of Eternity, " the inhabitants of the world 
stand in awe of Him. " A man in a great position 
may not be of great character, but God is great. 
If the external trappings of His grand estate be 



considered, God is great. If we cease to think 
of Him as Creator, we believe Him to be great 
in Himself, and that He was just as great before 
He made the world, as He has been since. 

Now, the revelation of our text teaches us what 
kind of majesty God's is. It is not the majesty 
of circumstance, nor the majesty of vanity, nor 
the majesty of pride, nor the majesty of infinite 
reserve, but the majesty of love. It ceases to be 
awful.* Not with a feeling of mingled reverence 
and fear do we now regard our Royal Father, 
but with a mingled feeling of reverence and 
affection. 

Moreover, Majesty governs. 

In the case of the government of God it must, 
of necessity, be autocratic. There can be no shar- 
ers in the legislative and executive departments of 
the universe. It is a great happiness that it is so. 
In human governments, if we could find a man 
of perfect wisdom, justice, and purity, having 
sufficient executive ability to carry on the legis- 
lative, the judicial, and the executive parts of 
governments, and with sufficient mental power 
to sustain him in the discharge of these varied 
and vast functions, all right-minded people 
would probably agree to have him autocrat, be- 
cause they would be sure that thus would be 
gained all the ends sought. But, because there 
is no such man, or, if he exists, he has never 
been discovered, we are compelled to make all 
the contrivances necessary to secure, through 
many men, as nearly as practicable, what he 
could entirely do alone. 

God is autocrat. All the laws that exist in the 
physical, the intellectual, and the spiritual world, 
He enacted and He enforces. There is not 
strength enough in all the combined powers of 
all men to reverse or suspend one of those laws. 
They are inevitable. In the thought that they 
are inevitable, there is something exceedingly 
frightful at first sight. It looks as though that 
which thinks and feels is placed at the mercy of 
that which can neither think nor feel, and as if 
sensitive consciousness were thrown like grist 
into the hopper of the mill of unconscious 
unfeelingness. And out of this there came to 
men and women ten thousand times ten thou- 
sand hard and painful questions many of them 
wholly insoluble difficulties. And then come 
hard thoughts of God, and the world darkens, 
and men lose heart and moral energy. 

It is very easy, I think, to see that we can 
never fathom God's reasons for every law, and 
that He could not make us comprehend His rea- 
sons. Some we can partly see, others must 
always be past our comprehension. 



220 



God is Love. 



But notice what relief this text gives to the 
whole subject. " God is love." The Majesty of 
God is the majesty of love. Every law must 
have been enacted, and must now be enforced 
from love. Love is at the bottom of the whole, 
Love animates the whole, Love will carry the 
whole to its consummation, Love will satisfy us 
at the last. What that Love does now we do 
not know, but we shall know hereafter. The 
King does not repel us, does not hate us, is not 
afraid of us. He is essentially love, and the 
whole stupendous system of law in the universe 
is a vast exponent of that essence which is Love 
and which is God. 

How this truth helps us in our efforts to con- 
form ourselves to the law of the Heavenly 
Father ! So far as we can comprehend, all the 
operation of those laws work the happiness of 
His human children, and the whole unknown 
ground of the incomprehensible is covered with 
the soft splendor of this divine declaration, 
" God is love." 

II. The wisdom of God is the wisdom of Love. 

Sir James Mackintosh gives this admirable 
definition of wisdom: "It is the habitual em- 
ployment of a patient and comprehensive un- 
derstanding in combining various and remote 
means to promote the happiness of mankind." 
A very widely accepted definition is that which 
I believe owes its authorship to Sir William 
Temple: " The employment of the best means 
to attain the best ends." 

Whatever definition we give the word, wis- 
dom, it must be applied to God in its widest and 
highest sense. We are incapable of conceiving 
God apart from infinite wisdom, all knowledge 
of all things and all skill in the best use of them. 

Among men they are often reckoned wise 
who acquire great knowledge of many things 
and direct them to the achievement of personal 
ends. And they are often reckoned wise who 
are able to assist others, to avoid traps set for 
them by their enemies and to seduce their ene- 
mies into falling into traps set for them. The 
former is mere selfishness. The latter is mere 
cunning. Both are very low. 

And yet the former is often supposed to be the 
vvisdom of God. For Himself He is supposed to 
have devised and created the whole system of 
things, material and spiritual. He is repre- 
sented as an infinite Egotist. There is a sense 
in which all things were created for the glory of 
God, but it is in the sense of the glory of love ; 
as the glory which comes back upon any man 
who gives himself and what he has for the hap- 
piness of others. If a God of infinite resources 



construct a universe adapted to children which 
are to be born of Him, and then out of pure 
lovingness beget those sons and daughters, it 
must needs be, that they, being capable of 
thought and feeling, should render Him all 
kinds of homage and worship. We perceive 
that He has made this the law of the universe 
that rational beings should get by giving, should 
enrich themselves by what they imparted to 
others. 

It is thus, and only thus, that the universe can 
be said to have been created for the glory of 
God. Fancy the other view to be true : that in 
the silent eternity, when nothing was but God, 
He said to Himself, "Here I am, sublimely 
alone, and there are none to know how great I 
am and none to praise. I will create thought- 
ful beings. They shall stand in awe of me. 
There shall be in them something regal, some 
dim representation of my paramount and soli- 
tary grandeur. There shall be crowns. There 
shall be angels and men. They shall have 
glory. But they shall pile all their crowns at 
my feet, and shall feel that I am Lord of lords 
and King of kings ; and I shall know that they 
feel this : and I shall enjoy this glory." 

Now, the very fact that He has made us so 
that all healthy minds regard with horror such a 
representation of boundless selfishness when it 
is referred to the Father of heaven and earth, is 
good ground of presumption that no such solil- 
oquy ever degraded God and spoiled the sanc- 
tity of the silence of eternity. 

No, all the wisdom displayed in the constitu- 
tion and the government of the universe is the 
wisdom of love. It was love, not selfishness, 
which led God to become a father of innumer- 
ous progeny. It was love, not selfishness, which 
led Him to make His home and theirs a house 
of many mansions. His wisdom, if exerted 
for selfish ends, for ends that grew and centred 
in even His infinite Self, would not have been 
so glorious a wisdom as is his wisdom of love. 

We know how love quickens wits in human 
beings, how it makes way for the accomplish- 
ment of its sweet designs, how it overleaps 
obstructions and overcomes difficu'ties that it 
may carry the benediction of its lovingness to 
the object beloved. As it is in the children, so 
we must believe it is with the Father, that His 
wisdom was quickened and sweetened into 
supreme efforts to combine various and remote 
means, indeed to combine all existing means, to 
promote the happiness of His dear children; 
and, although we cannot now see how this is to 
be accomplished by some of the arrangements 



God is Love. 



221 



known to us, we are assured that it will be so, 
for " God is love," and His wisdom will be the 
wisdom of love. 

III. The power of God is the Power of love. 

There is scarcely anything which impresses 
the human imagination like power. The capa- 
bility of producing changes, as it comes to act 
most rapidly and produce most change on very 
large bodies or on a very large sphere of things, 
gives the beholder an idea of sublimity if the 
changes be not hurtful, and of uncomfortable fear 
if they be. 

We suffer also from a sense of helplessness. 
What can we do before power which so greatly 
surpasses our own ? There are such displays of 
God's power as overwhelm us. They are inde- 
scribable. They overload the imagination until 
it faints. We say, He can do what He will amid 
the armies of the skies and among the children 
of men : what if He should turn all this power 
into an enginery of torture ? He never has ; 
but may He not hereafter ? What is the essence 
of God? Is it selfishness or love? 

Until we can convince ourselves that God is 
so essentially love, — not simply loving or lovely, 
— that if He ceased to be love He would cease 
to be God, that love is not an attribute with Him 
as power and wisdom are, but that it is His very 
Godness, — until, I say, we come to believe that 
we cannot be happy. We cannot serve God 
with comfort, nor yield Him anything but that 
compulsory service, which can never, never be 
taken in lieu of love. A sense of His omnipo- 
tence will stand over us as a huge and threaten- 
ing terror. We shall do what He has commanded 
because we shall be afraid to do anything else, 
however much we may desire it. 

But when we come to see that God's essence 
is not power but love, that power is the mere 
implement of love, an instrument in the hands 
of love to carry out its designs, then, instead of 
being a gigantic taskmaster, standing over us 
with a vast whip, the crack of the thong of which 
makes the universe ring and startles God's human 
children with a spasm of fright, God's omnipo- 
tence becomes to us a grand, good angel, pure 
and beautiful and strong, with outstretched wings 
and outstretched arms, pronouncing benedictions 
upon our poor efforts, and protecting us in our 
labor of love. 

Whenever, therefore, we see displays of God's 
power in the prodigious movement of second 
causes, do not let us be frightened. When He 
boweth the heavens and cometh down, when He 
rideth upon a cherub and doth fly, yea, when He 
doth fly upon the wings of the wind ; when He 



maketh darkness His secret place, and His pa- 
vilion round about Him is dark waters and thick 
clouds of the skies ; when the Lord thundereth 
in the heavens, and the Highest gives His voice, 
hailstones and coals of fire, oh ! then let His 
children bow their heads in reverent worship ; 
but let no heart faint : it is the Lord, the Al- 
mighty Father, holding His universe in unfail- 
ing arms and singing, singing mightily, in tones 
that silence all other voices, singing the lofty 
songs of the Infinite Love. 

We have said how love quickens human wits : 
we know how it strengthens human weakness. 
What burdens it has enabled drooping shoulders 
to carry J What toils it has enabled feeble hands 
to accomplish ! What prodigies weak women and 
tender children have performed, when they were 
nerved and braced and upheld by the animating 
inspirations of love. We now know that so it is 
with God. He does His divinest best because 
His very nature is love. He employs His om- 
nipotence to do the work of love, and there is no 
most obscure child of His who does not have for 
his protection the pledges of that limitless power 
which fashioned the universe and the support of 
that arm on which all the worlds securely hang : 
for the power of God is the power of love. 
IV. The Holiness of God is the Holiness of Love. 

By holiness we mean moral perfection. It is 
the standard set before us to which we human 
children of God must ever strive to attain, and it 
is one of the attributes of our Heavenly Father, 
that attribute which excludes all moral imperfec- 
tion from His nature. 

Now, when we poor mortals, whose souls have 
been stained with sinfulness and whose lives have 
been disfigured with actual sins, contemplate the 
immaculate God and think how His holiness must 
shrink from our pollution, our hearts so sink 
within us that the offerings we come to present 
Him drop from our hands. 

Sometimes the holiness of God is made fright- 
ful to us by the ideas of " holiness" held by some 
good but gloomy people. 

I recollect once sitting behind one of our 
" great preachers" while he delivered what was 
considered a masterly sermon on the holiness of 
God, and as he proceeded with his terrific de- 
lineation of this attribute my teeth chattered and 
the circulation of my blood became irregular, 
and I think I should have fainted before the pict- 
ure of the holy demon my brother was painting 
if I had not saved myself by thinking of such 
passages of Holy Scripture as David's, " Give 
thanks at the remembrance of His holiness," 
and John's, " God is love." 



<222 God is Love. 



We are to recollect that there are pure, good, 
devoted people, who are not sanctimonious nor 
gloomy, whose devotion to God dignifies their 
lives and beautifies all their intercourse with 
their fellows ; and we are to recollect that the 
Holiest is the most tender, gentle, forbearing, 
and helpful with sinners, because the holiness 
of God is the holiness of love. 

And now, beloved brethren, let us make our 
practical lessons from this beautiful text, lessons 
to go with in our daily walk and work. 

I should say that the first of these is that a 
man's greatness is not to be measured by his 
outward possessions and achievements, not by 
his intellectual strength and wisdom, but by his 
power of loving. God only is absolutely great. 
Our greatness is merely comparative, but it must 
be measured by the approach of the essence of 
our character to the essence of God's character. 
He then is strongest who loves most. He is 
wisest who lays out all the resources at his 
command in the interest of love. And let us 
remember that this does not simply mean a 
return of affection, loving those who love us, 
loving those who are really lovable, but that it 
means essential lovingness, an affection like 
God's, having its rise in ourselves and not in our 
fellows, and going forth spontaneously, not as it 
is drawn out. O ye rich men, they are not 
the greatest who have gathered most ! O ye 
strong men, they are not the greatest who have 
done most ! O beloved, they are greatest who 
have most loved. 

Another lesson is to interpret all Scripture by 
this passage. In the Bible are many things 
which ''are hard to be understood," as St. Peter 
says. They give rise to many questions. They 
are the crucial trials of theologians, and often 
the perplexity of simple souls. 

Now, may your pastor tell you what he does 
with such passages ? When I cannot reconcile 
them with my sense of right, or with other parts 
of Scripture, I just lay down this text, " God is 
love," and I place the perplexing passage upon 
it, and then cover it with this same text, " God 
is love," and sandwiched thus I put it aside, un- 
til it comes to be so struck through and through 
with " God is love" that it gives me no more 
trouble. And some passages of Scripture I 
have laid away thus, to stay so, perhaps, until in 
heaven I shall see that what was dark on earth 
is all luminous there. And so we may do with 
the providences of God. He is love. He can- 
not say an unloving thing. He cannot do an 
unloving thing. What now seems a blow will 
then be seen to be but the sudden coming of 



the strong hand that had to clutch us in order 
to save us. 

We go out of the Temple into life's usual work, 
dear brethren, feeling that we have learned this 
other lesson, that we may trust Him everywhere 
and forever. We shall not catechise Him, shall 
we? We would not betray a want of confi- 
dence in love, would we ? You know how hard 
it would be if you had been loving on through 
years, through repeated absences, through dark- 
ness, and, when you met, the loved one had a 
hundred questions to ask, as why you had done 
this and why you had omitted that. It would 
spoil your love or break your heart. Let us 
not question Him ! We are frail, but loving. 
He is essential love. He does not love us 
because we love Him, but He asks us to love 
Him because He first loved us. 

We have 'life and death and eternity before 
us. What shall be in that life, in that death, in 
that eternity, we cannot tell. But we shall find 
Him there ; there, where the temptation is strong- 
est ; there, where the darkness is greatest ; there, 
where the conflict is fiercest ; we shall find Him 
there ! If we walk even through the valley of 
the shadow of death we shall fear no evil. Why 
should we ? We may not be able to see Him or 
to hear Him. For some purpose of love He may 
not speak to us, nor touch us. But when the 
silence and the darkness become oppressive we 
may break forth into David's song, " Thou art 
with me!" Is not that enough? "I will 
never leave thee nor forsake thee," is His 
pledge. 

Let us never forget that we owe the revelation 
that " God is love" to the gospel of Jesus. His 
dear friend John, some evening when his heart 
was full, may have asked the Master, saying, 
"Tell me, tell me, my dearest friend, what is 
God ?" And Jesus grasping his hand and look- 
ing down into his eyes may have said, " God is 
love." It was a grand revelation. Through the 
ages men's hearts had been crying " what is 
God ?" Many answers had come, and from some 
of them some hearts had gathered that God was 
good and affectionate, and often showing loving- 
ness, but to none had come the revelation, and 
none had discovered by research, that the es- 
sence of the existence of God is love. " God is 
spirit:" so are angels: so are men. But "God 
is love" — oh ! that is the loftiest conception of 
the intellect and most blessed repose of the 
heart. Everywhere in His universe, everywhere 
in His eternity, we His children, may now confi- 
dently go forward singing " God is love, God is 
love I" 



XXXVI. 

§ Xdph^UttXC iff ®0»*t0ttSStttf<!!S. 

" AND HE SAID UNTO THEM, TAKE HEED AND BEWARE OF COVETOUSNESS : FOR A MAN'S LIFE CONSIST - 
ETH NOT IN THE ABUNDANCE OF THE THINGS WHICH HE POSSESSETH. 

4 4 AND HE SPAKE A PARABLE UNTO THEM, SAYING, THE GROUND OF A CERTAIN RICH MAN BROUGHT FORTH 
PLENTIFULLY: AND HE THOUGHT WITHIN HIMSELF, SAYING, 'WHAT SHALL I DO, BECAUSE I 
HAVE NO ROOM WHERE TO BESTOW MY FRUITS V AND HE SAID, ' THIS WILL I DO I I WILL PULL 
DOWN MY BARNS AND BUILD GREATER, AND THERE WILL I BESTOW ALL MY FRUITS AND MY GOODS. 
AND I WILL SAY TO MY SOUL, ' SOUL, THOU HAST MUCH GOODS LAID UP FOR MANY YEARS J TAKE 
THINE EASE, EAT, DRINK, AND BE MERRY !" BUT GOD SAID TO HIM, 'THOU FOOL ! THIS NIGHT 
THY SOUL SHALL BE REQUIRED OF THEE I THEN WHOSE SHALL THOSE THINGS BE WHICH THOU 
HAST PROVIDED ?' 

"SO IS HE THAT LAYETH UP TREASURE FOR HIMSELF, AND IS NOT RICH TOWARD GOD. " LUKE, XII. I 5-2O. 



Some people seem to be born impertinent. 

Christ had been talking of the most profound- 
ly interesting things in heaven and earth, when 
a worldling most inopportunely said, " Master, 
speak to my brother, that he divide the inherit- 
ance with me." It was an inexcusably inap- 
propriate speech. But the man was not demand- 
ing anything wrong. His was not an unright- 
eous request. His brother had probably wronged 
him. But it showed that even the preaching of 
Jesus failed to draw him from worldly thoughts. 
Jesus was solemnly uttering most profound 
sayings about sin and eternity, holiness and the 
Holy Ghost, and all the time this man was say- 
ing to himself, " I wonder if I cannot somehow 
use the influence of this wise and eloquent 
preacher to get back from my brother the por- 
tion of the inheritance which is my due ?" His 
brother's covetousness had led him to a neglect 
of relative duties, to the defrauding of a brother : 
this man's covetousness had led him to a neglect 
of pious duties. 

It gave our blessed Lord an opportunity to 
utter a solemn warning against covetousness. 

Covetousness is an inordinate desire to in- 
crease our material possessions. It will probably 
lead to foul means ; but if it do not it is covet- 
ousness nevertheless ; it is an excessive desire, 
and therefore wrong and hurtful. It makes one 
strive to gain what one should not have, or to 
keep what should not be retained. 

The following reasons should lead us to guard 
against this form of sin. 

i. It is so insidious. It is so possible to lead 



a whole life of covetousness. and die without 
ever suspecting the taint. It is a secret, noise- 
less, slow, sure, eating cancer in the vitals of 
the manhood. Every other sin erupts. Com- 
ing to the surface, we can perceive it. But 
covetousness shrinks and draws the fluids and 
the forces which keep life juicy and lively, down 
to a slow central heat which consumes them. 

And " society" is not going to blame a man for 
being covetous. " Society" is made up of just 
such people. So, you may thoroughly cherish 
the sin of covetousness and incur no blame. 
Every other sin is disgraceful ; lying, theft, adul- 
tery, murder, — these stain a man's reputation. 
But you may be covetous, and be not simply a 
great merchant or a great banker, but a leader 
in Bible and Tract Society movements, a Bishop 
in the church of God, a noted philanthropist, 
and die in the odor of sanctity and be damned 
as a sinner in eternity, at the moment some poor 
deceived preacher may be standing over your 
corpse upon earth and canonizing you as a saint. 
It is not disgraceful to be covetous, and society 
will not help you to reform, and it is a sin which 
eludes detection. Its very insidiousness ought 
to be a warning to all people. 

2. It is deceitful. It does not show its colors. 
It never passes for a sin. It has a deal of "vir- 
tuous indignation" at being so classified. It is a 
respectability, a conservatism, a prudence, — in 
fine, a virtue. 

It has the appearance of caring for one's own. 
It looks as though it might be the twin-brother 
of honesty. It pays its debts, and is not called 



A Prophylactic of Covetousness. 



into court. It is a standing rebuker of the sins 
of idleness, gluttony, intemperance, and prodi- 
gality. No one can show any law of God or 
man which the covetous man breaks, because it 
is so exceedingly difficult in any particular case 
to demonstrate that the man is covetous, while 
everybody knows what covetousness is and every- 
body denounces the sin in general. There is no 
other devil that has such aptitude in putting on 
the appearance of an angel of light. It sings 
and prays and goes to church and contributes 
to church funds, and says grace at meals, and 
does many things that ought to be done because 
they are good and beautiful : but the seen, the 
tangible, the perishable material things of this 
world, it makes to dominate over the soul of a 
man with a tyranny all the more dangerous be- 
cause its chains are not seen, nor heard, nor felt 
to be chains, but really seem to be an ornament 
of grace about the neck. 

3. It is incurable. The point of the earnest- 
ness and vehemence of the warning lies here. 
Jesus says, most solemnly, " Take heed," and 
" guard against." Against the loss of what may 
be easily replaced, one gives little warning. It 
is that the absence of which is to make such a 
great chasm in this life, the loss of which is so 
irreparable, that it is carefully guarded. No 
man warns his friend against what can at the 
most prove an inconsiderable inconvenience, or if 
more only a temporary damage. It is a great 
peril which arouses all our interest in a friend. 
If we see him exposed to a contagious disease 
which has proved incurable in almost every 
case of the millions of cases which have been re- 
ported, we grow concerned, and exert ourselves to 
remove him. For the two reasons just assigned, 
men who become covetous live and die 
without suspecting what ails them, and when 
the disease has firmly seated itself, the man can 
never be made to understand his condition. He 
resents the intimation that he is covetous. 
Therefore Christ does not say/' Cure yourselves 
of your covetousness," but " Take heed and be- 
ware of covetousness." It is possible to be cured. 
The love of God is sufficient for all things. The 
blood of Jesus cleanseth from all unrighteous- 
ness. But it is not probable. A thousand liars, 
harlots, thieves, and murderers are reformed 
and regenerated where one covetous man dis- 
covers his sinfulness and finds salvation. 

4. It is unsatisfactory. The Lord says, ''A 
man's life consisteth not in the abundance of 
the things which he possesseth." So a covetous 
man overreaches himself. What does he want ? 
More money, or what money represents, mate- 



rial possessions of various kinds. Why ? That 
he may minister to his living. But life is of 
two kinds, — animal, that which connects soul 
and body, and spiritual, that which has the sus- 
tentation of its existence from what money never 
did represent. The former does not require so 
much. Indeed, a man cannot possibly invest 
in hi sbody many thousands of dollars. It has 
a limit of capability. And any man who simply 
exerts himself is most likely to secure all that 
his body needs without any anxious care. The 
true life, which is not breathing, but being happy, 
can be had without " abundance" of possessions. 
These may be had without the happiness. If 
the one depended upon the other, then a man 
might struggle and be anxious for money, with- 
out such a show of unreasonableness. But a 
true life is not dependent upon material things. 
A man's life does not consist in what he HAS, 
but in what he IS, and in what he does. The 
superabundance is absolutely useless. He can- 
not manage it. A man may have a hundred 
millions in the bank. He can only use now 
what will pay for his dinner. All over is ?ww 
useless to him : and so it will be at any moment 
of his life. A man that is great and good, is 
happy. A man that is neither, is wretched. A 
hovel does not degrade the in-dweller, nor a 
palace elevate. A king is a royal person in a 
hut; a beggar is a beggar even if he slip into 
the palace and sit down on the throne. Life is 
from within. 

That suggested to the great Teacher the para- 
ble in the text. A brief but very powerful dra- 
matic sketch it is. 

A certain man was already rich. He owned 
a large tract of land, for so the word signifies, 
which in our version is rendered " ground." 
It was a productive plantation. It "brought 
forth abundantly." He was rich and growing 
richer — growing richer very fast. He had built 
a barn. That was not sufficient. He built 
another. We really do not learn how many he 
did build. But his building could not keep pace 
with his crops. So, one day he considered the 
case, and was mightily puzzled. He had reached 
the point of the perplexity of riches. He looked 
all about him, over his plantation and through 
his barns. Poor fellow I His concern deepened. 
He exclaimed, " What shall I do ? What shall 
I do ?" 

There are two periods in a man's life when he 
asks that question, just that way : the one, when 
he has not enough, the other when he has too 
much. The way he answers the question in each 
case shows the man. This man had probably 



A Prophylactic 



of Covetousness. 



225 



come into that country a poor boy, with his staft 
in his hand, and shoeless and penniless. He 
had walked up and down the lanes. He had 
looked over the fences into men's fields and up 
at their comfortable farm-houses or stately man- 
sions, and then at his own ragged and torn con- 
dition. The tooth of hunger struck into his 
vitals. He was faint. "What shall I do? 
What shall I do ?" He was no dreamer. He 
fell to work, willing to labor for mere victuals, 
and do meanest menial work for bread. And so 
he rose and grew. And so he came to the place 
we meet him in the parable — the second time of 
crying " What shall I do?" He had too much, 
— more than he needed, more than he could 
manage. 

Let us listen to his soliloquy. " Look at these 
crops ! The barns are all full, and here is all 
this. Where shall I put it ? The fact is, my 
business is growing into a very big affair. I 
have reached the point where I must make a 
plan for all future life." — He pauses. He looks 
down at the ground, and up at the sky. He 
drops his head to one side and shuts his eyes, 
that his thoughts may not be disturbed, — " Oh !" 
he says suddenly, " I'll tell you what I'll do. 
I'll pull down my barns and build greater. And 
then, when they are built and filled, I will say. 
to my soul, ' Soul, thou hast much goods laid 
Up for many years. Take thine ease, eat, drink, 
be merry.' " At seeing this way out of his diffi- 
culty, he rubs his hands and brightens up. 

Have we been listening? So has Almighty 
God. He always listens to soliloquies, spoken 
or only thought. Now he speaks to our pros- 
perous friend, in a tone very low like a whisper, 
and very startling like a thunder- ::Iap. " Thou 
fool ! This night do they require thy soul. 
Then whose shall all these be ?" 

This verdict of the Searcher of Hearts upon 
a human character should lead us to serious 
study of the whole case. 

It is quite apparent that the man was not en- 
gaged in an illegitimate business — nor even in 
one that was at all questionable. He was not a 
thief, nor gambler, — nor was he a speculative 
operator in stocks. He was neither banker nor 
merchant. If money has pollution in its touch, 
he avoided it. He was not exposed to the trials 
which beset those men whose business compels 
them to buy in the cheapest and sell in the 
dearest market. He lived in the rural districts, 
away from the metropolis: and he was an agri- 
culturist. If any man can lead a spotless life, 
surely a farmer can. Do farmers always ? No. 
And not more frequently than those in other pur- 



suits. My life has been so divided that I have had 
about equal chance to study farmers, traders, and 
professional men, and the result of my observa- 
tions is the conviction that farmers are about as 
good as the others and no better. I have known 
planters who were as mean as the meanest ped- 
dler I ever saw, and I have known men in Wall 
Street, and — yes, I think I may even say this — 
in Washington, — who were as good as any 
farmers I ever met. I have known farmers who 
grumbled at the extortion of merchants, but who 
eagerly snatched at the advantage given them 
by a drought or blockade to lock up their corn 
and wait for still greater advance in the prices. 
But the employment of farming is one in which 
a man is subjected to the fewest temptations. 
If he do wrong, it is because it is in him. 

This man in the parable was a farmer, and— - 
a fool. 

But he was not a fool because he was rich. It 
is not true that "any fool can make money." 
It requires brains and thought and energy and 
perseverance, — all these in such amount and 
proportion as would make the man great in any 
other department. Nor does it follow that he 
was a sinner because he was rich. Ordinarily, 
if a man be very rich it is because he or some 
ancestor has done wrong. But it is not so 
always. Some men are so wise and good that 
with increasing liberality they grow rich. Job 
was that perfect man who won even the admira- 
tion of God, and he was the richest man of his 
region, if not of his age. Abraham was the 
"friend of God," and he was a millionaire. In 
every age some of the saintliest have been among 
the most prosperous. To-day there is no better 
man or woman in garret or chapel than you may 
find in some grandest mansion or some loftiest 
church in this city. I hope I shall not be mob- 
bed for saying it, but honestly I do not believe 
that all the viciousness of the world is among 
the rich. Men ought not to despise or hate the 
rich, but pity them, for with great difficulty, as 
the Master says, do they enter the kingdom of 
heaven. And he that sets the poor against the 
rich, inciting the many against the few, appeal- 
ing to the passions of those who have not against 
those who have, turning servants against masters, 
employes against employers, labor against capi- ' 
tal, wresting men's houses and lands and serv- 
ants from them by preaching the crusades of 
agrarianism is, to speak after the manner of the 
French, " a Communist ;" but to speak after the 
manner of God, " a fool." 

But the man in this parable was at once a rich 
man and a "fool." 



°22G 



A Prophylactic of Covetousness. 



I. He was a " fool" because he could not com- 
prehend that condition of things which he him- 
self had created, nor the demands which they 
made upon him. He was short-sighted. He 
had not looked all through his work and laid his 
plans, and arranged his energies for the results 
which would naturally come from the working 
of those plans. When a wise man enters upon 
any undertaking he prepares himself for failure 
and for success, and arranges to make success 
still greater. When a wise man goes to a city 
he lays out his work and his capital and his 
energy, so that each shall help all. This man 
fell to work to succeed. And he did succeed. 
But when success came, he was not ready for it. 
All which shows how little distance ahead of him 
the man had looked. He had no great ulterior 
aim. He was going on in the treadmill of 
business, and ^vhen the movable floor was by 
his own muscular exertion sent on an increased 
rapidity he was not ready for it, but tripped and 
fell. 

Men generally suppose that it requires no 
preparation to be ready for success. This is a 
grave mistake. Look at the successful men 
around you in this city, and see what a differ- 
ence. There are men here with millions who 
do not know what to do with them. Up to a 
certain point they could manage the increase 
by working it into their business, but now the 
business and the increase have grown so large 
together that they are utterly unmanageable. 
When a man reaches this point he begins to 
destroy, to tear down barns, that are good barns, 
and that would be quite sufficient for other men, 
and build new ones, that are not better but 
greater. The new buildings are well enough, 
but the tearing down is not good. And yet you 
have seen a man pull down a splendid mansion, 
which was not old, and which cost a hundred 
thousand dollars, that on the same spot he might 
erect another which should cost a million. The 
intelligence which has projected the prosperous 
business does not always seem equal to the 
emergencies of prosperity. 

What was the trouble in the case we are con- 
sidering? The man did not comprehend his 
own case. It was not that he had too little barn, 
but that he had too much corn. He was coming 
to love his corn too much, the corn he could 
not eat. It is a trait of human nature that men 
set their heart on riches, not so much when they 
are going as when they are increasing. He was 
striving to house corn that should have been 
distributed. After filling the barns that were 
upon his own grounds there were plenty of other 



barns, the houses of the needy, the houses of 
the widows, the mouths of orphaned infants, as 
Ambrose says. He did not seem to ha-e ever 
thought that when God fills a fountain and then 
pours in more, it is that the drippings and spill- 
ings of the surcharged fountain may make rills 
and streams to refresh the surrounding foliage 
and irrigate the neighboring ground. He was 
sealing up a reservoir. 

He had invited Success to be his guest. Suc- 
cess came, and the fool did not know how to 
entertain. 

2. He was a "fool" because he misunderstood 
his relation to the external world. 

See with what an air of proprietorship the 
man acts. "7" have no room where to bestow 
my fruits. I will pull down my barns and 
build greater; and there will I bestow all ?ny 
goods and my fruits." Will men never adjust 
themselves to the facts of God and the laws of 
the Universe ? God intends this Universe to go 
on growing forever. He has created man to 
glorify the world, to put the transfiguring touch 
of mind on matter, and make the insensate glow 
with the light of the spiritual. He has created 
man so that he has his best growth and happi- 
ness while doing this blessed work. The moment 
the man begins to draw the world down on him- 
self he begins to be crushed out of sight. The 
moment he begins to pour himself out on the 
world he grows and the world brightens. 

We are not put in proprietorship in this world. 
The first thing of all is to recognize our work as 
that of agents, holding for another, to return to 
that other, and to give up whatever we return 
much beautified and enlarged by having been 
entrusted to us. 

"Fruits?" Why, nothing is fruit that is not 
enjoyable. "Goods?" Why, nothing is good 
that brings trouble and perplexity. And here 
was this man burdened with what he could not 
enjoy, and being about to put it away, "bestow" 
it, where it is to be utterly useless. He was re- 
versing the position of parties, he was misappre- 
hending the uses and good that are in things, 
he was perplexing his intellect to devise ways 
of violating the fixed laws of the Universe, and 
to do this without bringing any harm to him- 
self. Was anything more needed to justify the 
great Teacher in calling this man a " fool ?" 

3. And, he did not know the difference be- 
tween his body and his soul, the requirements 
of one and the demands of the other. 

He did not know who he was. He really 
thought his flesh to be himself. He had not 
yet ascertained his identity. 



A Prophylactic 



of Covetowsness. 



227 



Hear what he says. After contemplating the 
destruction of his barns and the erection of 
others that should be larger, and meditating 
upon the fullness of the new barns and the 
amount of goods they should contain, he tells 
himself what he is going to tell his soul when 
that happy day should arrive. He would call 
up his soul, and say, " Soul, thou hast much 
goods laid up for many years. Take thine ease, 
eat, drink, and be merry." He never lived to 
hold that colloquy with his soul. If he had, it 
is quite easy to fancy what the soul would say in 
reply to such an address. 

" Have I much goods?" "Yes." "Where?" 
" Yonder, in those many barns." " Are 
truth, love, righteousness, faith, hope, and im- 
mortality piled up in those capacious barns ?" 
"O, no." "What then?" " fcorn ! plenty of 
corn, abundance of breadstuffs of all kinds ! 
Corn!" "Corn?" "Yes, corn!" "Corn? Have 
I jaws for mastication, a throat for deglutition, 
and a stomach for digestion ? Am I, that am 
thinner than the air, and finer than the light, and 
wider than the world, to be fed like an ass, or 
an ox, a brute beast that boweth his head down 
and droppeth back into clods and nothingness? 
Why, what do you take me to be, that you offer 
me less ethereal food than that which enriches 
the angels who live above the Empyrean ? You ! 
you are not worthy of me ! ! Corn, corn indeed, 
and for your Soul! God help me!" "Why," 
says the fool, " that is what I have spent many 
years to obtain. I have risen early, sat up late, 
and eaten the bread of carefulness, that I might 
reach abundance, abandon care, and devote the 
rest of my life to ease. Come, Soul, eat, drink, 
and be merry, — take thine ease ; thou hast 
much food laid up for many years." 

"Well," answers the Soul, "suppose I could 
take any pleasure in these gross perishables. 
You have only enough for many years. How 
many? Ten, fifty, a hundred? No matter how 
many, they are years. They will end. But my 
existence is unmeasured by the flight of years. 
When these are all gone and I shall still be exist- 
ing, where then shall I find sustenance ? No, you 
have mistaken my whole nature, and you do 
not know yourself. You have been short- 
sighted. When the many years are ended, what 
then?" 

Alas, the poor man had not looked so far. He 
acknowledged that he had nothing in the Uni- 
verse except what he could put in barns, Hear 
him: "There will I bestow ALL my goods." 
In a barn : a flood could sweep it all away ; a 
fire destroy it in a single day. All he had was 



at that risk. If one should sell all he had and 
sell himself, and invest the entire proceeds in a 
jewel and suspend it to a rotten thread that 
could hardly bear its weight, and swing it in the 
wind over an abysm, would he not be a fool ? 
Such is a man who would be totally impover- 
ished if all his material possessions were swept 
away. 

4. He postponed his enjoyments. 

There is a sense in which the old Epicurean 
saw of " Carpe diem," " Seize and enjoy to-day," 
holds good. If there be any real, sure happi- 
ness to be had now, one should not let it slip 
by postponing it to the uncertainties of the fu- 
ture. What pleasure we have ever had, we still 
have. What we have not, we may never have. 
The Past and the Future lie equally beyond our 
personal control. The Now must be packed full 
and close, — pressed down with hearty effort and 
with hearty delight. The fate of this man in the 
parable should be a warning. Many a man is 
like him. Many a man says, "When I have 
accumulated a fortune, and built a house, and 
established my family, I will settle down and 
have a good time !" Why not have a good time 
now ? 

A man knows what he has in hand, and ought 
to know its capabilities of yielding him pleasure. 
Suppose there be much pleasure to be had out 
of a greater amount of material possessions ; 
there is much pleasure to be had from youth 
and health. Youth goes — is goingevery moment. 
Health may go in a moment. Elastic spirits, 
present friends, the activities of the to-day, are 
something. Money is not all. If money, youth, 
health, innocence, friends, good spirits, keen 
zest for pleasure, all could be had at once, it 
would be delightful exceedingly. But how 
many ever have them all at once ? Who has 
not some one of these ? While waiting for 
another we may lose the one already in hand. 
If growing riches could not give the man ease 
of soul, what right had he to expect that a for- 
tune fully grown would minister that pleasure ? 
And when is a fortune fully grown ? When he 
was a poor boy all he longed for was one mod- 
erate field and one modest barn, and he had 
pictured the delight he should have when these 
were compassed. He obtained them. He was 
as far from ease as ever ; and strove to add field 
to field and barn to barn. The very effort so 
weakened him that when they were purchased 
and built he was a sadder but not a wiser man. 
When both your hands are full you must lay 
down one thing before you can take up another. 
If this man had contented himself with his full 



228 



A Prophylactic of Covetowsness. 



barns, and sent the surplus all about him to the 
poor and needy and the starving, the men and 
women who were crying in agony " What shall 
I do ?" he would have relieved himself of a bur- 
den, and girdled his whole estate with the bene- 
diction and prayers of the poor, in the midst of 
which he might have had every rational enjoy- 
ment which God vouchsafes to man. 

5. He relied upon a known uncertainty. In 
the first place he could not, on his theory, make 
this fine speech to his soul, until the barns had 
been removed and new ones had been erected. 
That required time. What might happen in 
,that time he could not tell. All the " chances and 
changes of this mortal life" might be therein. As 
the timbers of the new barn were going up, they 
might come down upon him and cut him off 
utterly or leave him a mangled cripple, wretched 
for all life, quite past the anodynes that wealth 
can bring to pain. 

But then, suppose he should live to see the 
barns and see them full ; how long might they 
remain ? If they stood, how long might they be 
full ? If full, how long might they be his ? If 
his, how long might he have any capacity for 
enjoying them ? All these questions point to the 
known instability of all human things. "-Much 
goods — laid up — for many years V Here was a 
triple uncertainty. And yet he was going to 
settle down at his ease, eat and drink and be 
merry, forgetting that in eating and drinking 
men sometimes choke or go nto manifold dis- 
eases that dampen all merriiment. 

6. He omitted preparation for a future cer- 
tainty. 

He had been accumulating for whom ? Then 
whose shall these things be? "He heapeth 
up riches and knoweth not who shall gather 
them." How purposeless such a life seems! 
A man's death is announced in the papers. 
" He left a fortune of fifty millions." He " left" 
it — did he ? Why did he not stay with it ? What 
a palace, what parks, what equipage, what deli- 
cious food, what sumptuous furniture of books, 
and pictures, and statuary, and virtu, would 
not fifty millions buy ? If money can give what 
the soul needs he should have stayed by so huge 
a mass. But he could not stay. He was com- 
pelled to go. Then why did he lea ve it ? Why 
not take it with him ? Alas ! he could not. 
The gate of the grave is so narrow that slender 
ghosts do barely struggle through, and houses 
and lands, and coffins and shrouds and bodies 
are all torn off, and the soul is naked on the 
other side. He could not take his millions. To 
whom did he " leave" them? He could not 



know. Take what precaution a man may, he 
can have no knowledge when he dies of the 
direction his estate is to take. His will may be 
broken after much of the estate is squandered 
in litigation. If it go to the designated heir, he 
may spend it upon swindlers and harlots, or die 
and let it fall to his father's enemy. "Left his 
estate !" O is not that sad ? Been all his life 
long from early childhood accumulating this 
estate, and now must leave it ! Alas ! 

— " So is he that layeth up treasure for him- 
self and is not rich toward God." This is tran- 
scendent folly. The man has so buried himself 
in the perishable that when that goes he is gone. 
He has lost himself in the material ; abstracted 
his inmost, highmost nature and emptied it, as 
one should spill upon the sands of the desert his 
only bottle of water, when he knows that thence 
it can never be gathered up again. He passes 
into eternity with nothing ; as if one should go 
into a foreign land, a land of strangers, with 
none of their current money, and with nothing 
that could be converted into currency. On this 
side rich ; on that poor. Here the papers are 
full of accounts of his immense estate, where it 
lies and how it goes, — while he stands a pale 
and shivering spirit on the inside of the gate of 
death, with nothing. He is not rich toward 
God, nor rich in God. He hath not used the 
means at his control to please the owner thereof, 
and now he comes to the judgment a defaulter. 
He had not learned the blessed alchemy by 
which Love and Faith do change the baser met- 
als of this world to gold which endures forever. 

Dear brethren, the man in this parable had 
as much discrimination and good sense as most 
of the men around us. You and I think well 
of the intellects of those who succeed. He 
thought well of himself, as he knew hi? neigh- 
bors thought well of him. He saw in fancy all 
these new barns rise as monuments to his great 
business capabilities. He was "smart," he was 
"clever." So he thought; so the world thought. 
When smitten down, his neighbors said, " How 
unfortunate ! just in the midst of his great 
works /" And just before he was so smitten they 
were envying him ! 

The world wrote this epitaph on his tomb, — 
" A Success." 

God wrote this epitaph on his tomb,— "A 
Fool." 

My brethren, hear the warning of the Master, 
" Take heed and beware of covetousness." 
Whatsoever be the turn your worldly business 
take, let me beseech you to be rich toward 
God. 



XXXVII. 

"IF THOU SHALT CONFESS WITH THY MOUTH THE LORD JESUS, AND SHALT BELIEVE IN THY HEART 
THAT GOD HAS RAISED HIM FROM THE DEAD, THOU SHALT BE SAVED. FOR WITH THE HEART MAN 
BELIEVETH UNTO RIGHTEOUSNESS, AND WITH THE MOUTH CONFESSION IS MADE UNTO SALVA- 
TION." ROMANS, X. 9,10. 



THERE is nothing so much worth saving as a 
human being. 

To each man there is nothing so important as 
having himself saved. 

There is no philanthropy worth bearing the 
name that does not involve the saving of men. 
The grander a man is, and the clearer the per- 
ceptions he has of the real value of humanity, 
the more does he desire all men to be saved. 
Paul opens this chapter with, " Brethren, my 
heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, 
that they might be saved." 

The interest of our Heavenly Father in us 
bears on our personal salvation. The mission 
of the Son of God was prompted by this affec- 
tion. " Christ Jesus came into the world to 
save sinners." All who are in heaven, and all 
the good that are upon the earth, are deeply in- 
terested in our salvation. 

In view of such sublime concern for us we nat- 
urally ask ourselves, " From what am I to be 
saved?" Let us make no mistake about that. 
Let us waste no energies in striving to be saved 
without understanding quite distinctly what is 
the occasion of our peril. 

Of this we may make ourselves sure, that we 
are not to seek to be saved froin God. 

I mention this because I believe that there is 
a widespread mistake on this point, and men 
harm themselves, and do great injustice to the 
Heavenly Father, by cherishing the feeling that 
God is their great enemy, or at least the great 
.occasion of their peril. One of the direst of 
human mistakes is the supposition that God is 
the vast antagonist of Humanity ; that if we se- 
cure any good we must obtain it from our Infi- 
nite Enemy by violence or persuasions, or some 
appeasing sacrifices. 

Quite the opposite of this is the fact. In 
reality, we could not be saved if He were inimi- 
cal to us : and in the processes of salvation no 
one can help us as He can, and no one is so 



willing: and, when we are saved, no one in the 
universe has so great rejoicing. He never in- 
tends to injure us. He takes no delight in our 
being wrong or doing wrong. "God is love." 
He desires that we shall not be lost. He warns 
us that we must not lose ourselves. He does all 
that He can, without reducing us to mere ma- 
chines, to keep us from being lost. He fur- 
nishes all helps toward our salvation. "God 
so loved the world that He gave His only-begot- 
ten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should 
not perish." 

I beseech you, beloved, to disabuse your minds 
of all prejudices against the Father of your souls. 
He is good. You have nothing to fear from 
Him. No harm will ever come to you fnrn 
Him. All the good you have enjoyed or can 
enjoy comes from Him. Consider that point 
settled : and when you engage in the work of 
salvation, rely upon Him for all necessary assist- 
ance. 

In the next place, we are not to seek to be 
saved from the penalties of our sins. 

Let us recollect that these are merely the re- 
sult of the operation of laws, whose existence 
and certainty of operation are the safeguards of 
the whole universe. Penalties are pains which 
come from sinning. There are pains which come 
where there is no sinning. Our blessed Saviour 
was "undefiled and separate from sinners," yet 
He was "a man of sorrows and acquainted with 
griefs." 

It is unmanly to feel that, above all things, 
pain must be avoided. If other men's wrongs 
bring pain upon you, "in patience," that is by 
your endurance if you possess your souls." If the 
disciplinary arrangements of the universe give 
us pain, let us comfort ourselves, knowing that 
" our light affliction worketh for us a far more 
exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we 
look not at the things which are seen, but on the 
things which are not seen." 



230 



Faith and Confession. 



To an innocent and pure soul all pains are 
tolerable. You might cause him to undergo all 
the tortures in all the circles of Dante's " Infer- 
no," and he would be manly and self-contained. 
There would be no guilt. 

But suppose a man is really guilty? Well, in 
that case, it is not the pain which the conscious- 
ness of wrong-doing inflicts upon him from 
which he must strive to be saved. He may do 
that and succeed, but if so he will do it by be- 
coming worse. Pain stops when disease has 
produced mortification. It is folly, in view of 
the history of the world, to tell men that " vir- 
tue is its own exceeding great reward." It is 
not true, if absence of adversity and pain, and 
the presence of prosperity and ease, be that re- 
ward. Nor is it true that the wicked are suffi- 
ciently punished in this world. The more deeply 
a man sins, the more he hardens himself, the 
more he stifles conscience, the better time does 
he have. Inwardly, the pain has ceased ; out- 
wardly, if his bad deeds involve him, is he cal- 
lous to results. The fact is, that the more and 
more a man who is living in sin learns to live at 
ease, the more and more he is lost. 

So, it appears that it is neither God nor pain 
from which we are to be saved. 

From what, then ? From ourselves, from our 
bad character, from our sinfulness. 

Let us fix our minds intently on that. To a 
man saved from his sinfulness hell would be as 
sweet and cool a place as there is in the universe. 
To a man not saved from his sinfulness and from 
the consciousness thereof, heaven, with all its 
arrangements, whatever they are, would be an 
instrument of exquisite torture. The Saviour 
of the world bears His name, Jesus, because He 
saves His people from their sins, not from their 
pains and sorrows, and certainly not from any- 
thing which God is or God does. 

Now, how are we to be saved from our sins ? 

It cannot be by any works of righteousness 
which we have done or can do. Paul rightly 
concluded that by the deeds of the law no man 
can be justified. Consider two things in regard 
to our works. 

I. They are the mere fruits of our character. 
They are morally no better and no worse than 
the man who performs them. It is the man 
that imparts character to the act, not the act to 
the man. It is the apple-tree that produces ap- 
ples, and the vine that produces grapes. It is 
not the fruit that makes the particular kind of 
tree ; it is the particular kind of tree which pro- 
duces the particular kind of fruit. 

A liar may say what is literally true, and yet be 



a liar, and the formal truth at his lips may be, 
as far as he is concerned, a lie ; because he uses 
truth as he would a lie, and makes the selection 
for his own ends of falsehood. 

A mean, selfish, avaricious man may give up 
all that he has, for mean, selfish, avaricious pur- 
poses, and be no better for the deed. Paul 
seems to have meant something like this when 
he said, " Though I bestow all my goods to feed 
the poor, and though I give my body to be 
burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me 
nothing." The acts he mentions might be em- 
ployed to indicate the sublimest self-sacrifice, 
and yet they are nothing if the man's character 
be all meanness. 

2. There is an undeniable value in every good 
deed performed by any man from any motive. 
If it do him no good it will be profitable to oth- 
ers. But there is no power in any good deed, or 
in any number of them, to cancel one evil deed. 
A robber may distribute alms in the houses of a 
hundred poor people, but that can be no atone- 
ment for his robbery. And this is so because 
every man is bound by the moral law to do all 
the good he can at each particular moment of 
his life. There cannot, then, be an accumulat- 
ing fund of good works over and above what is 
required, upon which he may draw to supply 
deficiencies elsewhere. When a man has done 
his best he has done only his duty. 

It is quite apparent, then, that there must be 
some inward transformation, some change of the 
spiritual man, some expulsive power which shall 
save our souls from being sinful. 

What is that ? St. Paul, who has as clear a 
perception of the Gospel methods as any writer 
of the holy books, and a greater knowledge of 
mental philosophy than his contemporaries, 
teaches us that that expulsive power is an affec- 
tionate faith. " With the heart man believeth," 
says Paul. 

It is to me, dear brethren, a matter of perpet- 
ual surprise that men of science and philosophy 
should be objectors to the system of salvation 
set forth in the Gospel of Jesus, and so clearly 
expounded by His follower, Paul, because it 
seems to me so thoroughly suited to the consti- 
tution of man. It is the conjoint reception of 
certain truths by the intellectual and emotional 
departments of the inner man. 

The Christian religion has for its basis and its 
spirit precisely that which is the foundation of 
all science and the inspiration of all scientific 
progress, namely, a loving faith. 

Men talk slightingly, sometimes sneeringly, 
of faith, as if it were a fool's dream, and as" if 



Faith and 



its objects were the phantasmagoria of delirium, 
and as if in reality faith were only a subjective 
state of a feeble intellect. What ignorance, or 
forgetfulness, or contempt of intellectual philos- 
ophy such a course implies ! They forget that 
there can be no knowledge without faith, and no 
science without faith, that the first exhibition of 
intellectual existence after the display of those 
instincts which we share with brutes, is our faith, 
and that the last and loftiest and most splendid 
exertion of the grandest and most richly fur- 
nished intellects among scientific men is their 
faith, and that every step of the great career of 
such men as Faraday, Von Humboldt, Sir Hum- 
phrey Davy, the Herschels, and men of that 
class in the department of physical science, was 
taken under the inspiration of faith. 

Let any one study a human being supposed to 
be destitute of faith. Can that human being 
acquire knowledge? Of what? How? It is 
impossible. We obtain our knowledge from 
others or by the exercise of our own faculties. 
If from others, we must trust them : that is 
faith. If from our own exertions, we must trust 
our senses, and our powers of reasoning, and 
the continuous order in the universe, and that is 
faith. We should never make our observations, 
and never conduct our logical processes, without 
faith in advance. Logic, as a science, presup- 
poses faith, just as much as theology does. The 
constant practice of logic as an art is as much 
a life of faith as any religious course is a life of 
faith. The generalizations of science are all 
great acts of faith. In science, let a man deny 
everything of which he has not personal knowl- 
edge, and then he can know nothing. 

It is so in business, in our reception of facts 
and our generalizing from them, when the sub- 
jects are cotton, leather, iron, or any other 
commodity of commerce. What we know rests 
upon what we do not know ; and that must be 
an object of faith. 

Even Hume's famous sophism against Mira- 
cles demands for its reception just that kind and 
just that amount of faith which Miracles them- 
selves demand, because he asks us to grant, 
what we can never know, and can only believe, 
as he assumed without knowing, namely, that 
the experience of all men eighteen centuries 
ago was in perfect accordance with the experi- 
ence of Mr. Hume, or of you, if you accept his 
proposition. That might have been so, but we 
cannot know it, until proved, and logical proof 
needs faith in advance. Miracles might have 
then been performed, but we cannot know the 
fact, until proved, and the logical proof in this 



Confession. 281 



case, as in every other, demands faith, even as 
all mathematical demonstrations do, as you can 
begin neither to know nor to reason until you 
believe something. When, then, I am asked to 
believe that the experience of all the men in 
Palestine in the days of Jesus, and that of all 
the men in Egypt in the time of Pharaoh and 
Moses, was in exact accord with mine, when I 
know that the experience of thousands in my 
own age is in discord with mine, then I have a 
much greater load laid on my faith than all the 
Miracles of the Bible would be. 

Infidelity itself demands a basis of faith. You 
cannot disbelieve anything until you have first 
believed something. 

Now, as our first and last, our lowest and our 
highest, intellectual exercise is faith ; as all great 
achievements in discovery and trade and science 
have their basis in faith ; as no man, no matter 
how much knowledge he possesses, could ever 
make any exertion without faith in what he does 
not know ; as in the amassing of fortune or 
knowledge we are sustained by our faith ; as 
faith is equally natural to a little child and to 
the best-learned philosopher ; and, as any reli- 
gion, to be adapted to the constitution of man, 
must rest itself on his faith ; what means the 
sneer of the superficial or the outcry of the 
malignant against a system which has its most 
patent proof of its divine origin in its being 
planted on man's faith ? Preachers of the gos- 
pel will not in silence allow themselves to be 
treated patronizingly by other men of science ; 
at least I will not ; but I shall treat these gentle- 
men on the lower form of physical science with 
great kindness, until they can learn that but 
for religion we should relapse into deepest bar- 
barism. 

In regard to this Christian faith which Paul 
teaches, three things are to be noticed. 

i. It is belief in truths of a certain kind. 

It is falsely charged on Christian teachers that 
they ignorantly teach that faith is everything. 
Belief in what does not exist can never be prof- 
itable to the intellect or the spirit of man. It is 
baseless. Belief in error of any kind can never 
be useful to the intellect or the spirit of man. It 
is hurtful always. Truth must be the object of 
the faith which saves. 

Nor is it every kind of truth which saves the 
soul from sin. Belief in a certain kind of truth 
saves men from commercial disaster. A mer- 
chant, with a good capital, might have all pos- 
sible faith in Kepler's astronomical laws, and yet 
become a speedy bankrupt. A navigator might 
believe all the truths of moral and political phi- 



282 Faith and 



losophy, and yet run his vessel on wrecking reefs. 
It is just so in regard to the soul. Two and two 
make four : that is a truth : but it does not 
cleanse a man from spiritual defilement. There 
is not a liar that does not believe that. The 
whole is greater than any of its parts : that is 
axiomatic truth. Every man that ever cheated 
you believed that truth as much as you do ; but 
it did not keep him from being a swindler. It 
is only truths of a certain kind which save 
from sin. We shall see directly what those truths 
are, as Paul judged. 

2. It is not mere intellectual assent to a known 
truth. The affections must be involved if the 
faith is to purge sin from our characters. A re- 
ligion that did not touch the heart could hardly 
reform a man and a life. In other departments, 
a man must believe in the laws which regulate 
those several classes of things, and he must love 
to have those laws just as they are. To be a 
successful tradesman, one must believe in the 
fixity of the laws of trade ; and he must love to 
have them just as they are, else he will never be 
an enthusiastic merchant. Enthusiasm in sci- 
ence, politics, trade, and religion, is essential to 
progress. In all other things, " with the heart 
man believeth unto" success : in religion, 4 'with 
the heart man believeth unto righteousness." 

3. This loving faith is to control our actions. 
It will control them. " Unto righteousness" 
describes the external fruits of the internal grace. 
If there be any distinction between faith and 
works it can be no other than the distinction be- 
tween life and living. Faith is the life and 
works are the living. There can be no good 
and great living without faith. No man has a 
true faith and a false mode of living, If a man 
lies and cheats in business it is because his faith 
is false. You cannot have a living faith and be 
a bad man. You may stand up in the church 
to-day and repeat the Creed, but if you go down 
town to-morrow and deceive your customers, and 
conspire with others to create "a corner," as it 
is called, in gold, or stocks, or cotton, it will be 
because you are not animated by a true and vig- 
orous faith. A morality that has not the basis 
of faith is an expediency, a sham, and a snare. 

This is the teaching of the Gospel in regard 
to faith : and thus it is that faith works by love 
and purifies the heart. It is important now that 
we learn what are the true objects of faith, as 
seen by Paul, this great expounder of the Gos- 
pel, who showed in himself, in the most con- 
spicuous manner, the power of this Gospel to 
make the most thorough change in a man's 
character and life. 



Confession. 



The objects of saving faith, as he saw things, 
are a Person and a Fact. 

I. Paul says, "On Him," and he is speaking 
of Jesus Christ. 

It is to be noticed how this agrees with what 
the blessed Saviour taught. Jesus always in- 
sisted that His followers should believe on Him- 
self. "Believe on me," is His formula. 

It is to be noticed that the faith which saves 
men from their selfish sinfulness is not set forth 
in the Holy Scriptures, as belief in a mere dogma, 
in a dry theological proposition, in a scientific- 
ally constructed body of divinity. If these were 
the objects of saving faith, the vast majority of 
men and children would be lost. 

But a Person is set forth before us. It is our 
" Lord Jesus." His character is portrayed, His 
acts are narrated, His teachings are reported. 
The finer a man's mind is, and the better trained 
and the purer his heart becomes by believing in 
Jesus, the better his appreciation of this won- 
derful character will become. The stronger his 
memory, the greater his power of attention, the 
more time he devotes to the study, the greater 
will be his knowledge of this remarkable history. 
The gentler his heart and the more unsophisti- 
cated his intellect, the clearer will be his percep- 
tion of this wonderful teaching. But no meas- 
ure nor manner of the faith is prescribed, except 
that it be loving faith. In whatever measure we 
believe in Him, in that measure are we saved. 

And this is in accordance with the constitu- 
tion of man. We know that men are saved by 
their affectionate belief in other men. A weak 
man has trust in a strong man whom he cannot 
comprehend, but he loves him, and that loving 
trust in a greater soul saves the weaker. A little 
child cannot understand his great and good 
father. He has not learned to analyze his own 
mental processes. He does not know what faith 
is. But his relation to his father has led him to 
believe in that father lovingly; and it is that 
tender, hearty trust on the part of the child 
which gives the father a saving power over him. 

No matter that the children and the illiterate 
part of my congregation are not able to com- 
prehend the most extraordinary Person ever 
revealed to Humanity. He is to them the em- 
bodiment of all beautiful blessedness, and they 
love Him, and they trust Him, and they are 
saved. You who have trained intellects, and 
have made patient researches into every depart- 
ment of human thought which connects itself 
with Jesus Christ, and into His character and 
career, you are saved only by your loving trust 
in that sum-total of body and soul and character 



Faith and Confession. 233 



and history which makes up the Person we call 
Jesus Christ. 

Is it not so ? It is not in any particular thing 
He said or did, but in His Personality, includ- 
ing all He was and is, all He has done and is 
doing, that you trust. 

And all men who are saved from their sins 
love to have Jesus just as He is, the holy, the 
humble, the sin-hating, the sinner-forgiving, 
Teacher and Exemplar of self-sacrifice and per- 
fect devotion to the right and the good. 

There are good men outside the Church who 
believe in Jesus, and know that their belief is 
what saves them. There are other good men 
outside the Church who believe in Jesus, and do 
not yet know that they are so believing. The 
former remain outside because they think that 
they do not believe in Jesus enough, or do not 
believe in Him as they think we, who are inside, 
do ; and their honorable humility keeps them 
from us. The latter have an ideal of God which 
they have not yet perceived was realized in 
Jesus ; and frequently terms of church-member- 
ship have a tendency to keep them from seeing 
that "this same Jesus" is, as Paul says, "both 
ours and theirs." For all such excellent men 
my trust is, that God's spirit will dissipate the 
mists which now hang about them, and that 
hereafter they shall know even as also they are 
now known. 

II. But Paul also sets forth a Fact as an ob- 
ject of belief, namely, that God has raised our 
Lord Jesus from the dead. 

It is quite impossible to conceive that Jesus 
rose from the dead without at the same time be- 
lieving that it was the result of the exercise of 
the power which belongs to God alone : so 
that no debatable theological dogma is here. It 
is simply a question of fact. But it is a most 
important fact. It sets the seal to all the claims 
of Jesus to Saviourship, and confirms all His 
promises. 

If He was not raised from the dead, then His 
whole Personality falls down to the level of that 
height which men may attain by mere force of 
effort and human aid ; and, therefore, Paul 
justly concludes that "if Christ be not risen, 
then is our preaching vain and your faith also is 
vain." 

For its saving, the weaker needs the stronger. 
If Jesus was not raised from the dead, then Hu- 
manity can find in Jesus nothing stronger than 
itself. 

It is not, therefore, loving faith in Jesus as a 
mere man, that is to save us from our sinfulness. 
It is in Jesus Christ that we are to trust : in the 



Anointed One, the One set apart to be a Prince 
and a Saviour. And we are to love to have it so; 
we are to believe "with our hearts." Whoso- 
ever does believe in Him, — not coldly, as one is 
compelled to believe in a mathematical proposi- 
tion which has been demonstrated, — but warmly 
and heartily, — having perfect confidence in Him 
and ardent affection for Him, will have kindled 
in himself a burning passion that shall consume 
the dross of sinfulness. We cannot believe in 
Him and believe that sin is good : we cannot 
love Him and love sin. 

The Apostle adds another thing : " With the 
mouth confession is made unto salvation." 

Open discipleship is always insisted upon. 
Christianity is an eminently social and philan- 
thropic religion. A man is not to be interested 
in his own salvation alone. That would be emi- 
nently selfish, and selfishness is the root of all 
sinfulness, and our salvation is to be a salvation 
from all sinfulness. It is a necessity of every 
saved man that he do all he can for the salvation 
of others. He will not be ashamed of his 
Saviour. It is this open devotion to Christianity 
and to Jesus Christ which crystallizes men into 
Christian societies. 

In Paul's day, the fact of the resurrection of 
Jesus was the most distasteful of all the facts of 
Christianity. It was the disgrace of Judaism. 
It was the puzzle of Paganism. If He rose from 
the dead, that fact proves the Jewish people to be 
a nation of supreme criminals. If he rose from 
the dead, to become a Christian one must be- 
lieve and confess that fact, and that placed culti- 
vated Pagans in the greatest perplexity. If 
true, it showed that their philosophy was a folly 
and their religion a disgrace to humanity. In 
all ages a true Christian will confess Christianity 
in its most distasteful aspects. All the converts 
in Paul's day would confess the resurrection. 

It seems to me that we have lost sight of the 
fact that that was the chief meaning of baptism 
in the early church. We hear much of bap- 
tism as the "door" into the church, when it 
never was any such thing, and when Jesus said 
most emphatically, "I am the door." No man 
can be truly baptized unless he be already a 
member of the church of God, and his baptism 
is merely an open confession that he believes in 
the death, the burial, and the resurrection of 
Jesus, and so he becomes a confessor that he be- 
lieves in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Divine 
Saviour. In whatever way he does that, he is 
baptized. 

If my Quaker brother does not choose a mode 
which involves water, but prefers to stand up in 



Faith and 



Confession, 



" meeting" and say, " I believe in my heart that 
God hath raised up our Lord Jesus Christ from 
the dead," I do not see that I have any right or 
reason to say that that friend has not been bap- 
tized. 

The offence of the cross has come round in 
the nineteenth century to be just what it was in 
Paul's time. A large class of religionists, under 
the cover of the name of Christian, are endeav- 
oring to Judaize the world by denying the Di- 
vinity of Jesus and His resurrection from the 
dead. A large class of cultivated people are 
striving to Paganize the world by a literature 
which seeks to reduce our Lord Jesus to the level 
of the more respectable Pagans. They are 
striving to be saved from their sins by mitigat- 
ing their sins, by gilding their sins, by attempts 
at scientific demonstration that sin is part of the 
system of God, working out a greater good, a 
phase of transition, a black milestone on the 
road of the soul's progress. Their philosophy 
strives to save the sinner in his sins, but the re- 
ligion of Jesus teaches us that He can save sin- 
ners from their sins. 

And so, now, I am bound to do what I most 
cheerfully do, that which Paul did, proclaim to 
each of you, that " if thou shalt confess with 
thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in 
thy heart that God hath raised Him from the 
dead, thou shalt be saved." 

This combination of faith and open confession 
promotes our salvation in several ways. 

1. It breaks down the selfishness of our 
pride. 

We are emptied of self-conceit. We are 
brought to the humility of the truth. We can- 
not save ourselves. We cannot be saved without 
divine help. There is no Saviour but Jesus. We 
take the crowns from our heads and lay them on 
His. We confess and feel that He, and He 
only, " is exalted to be a Prince and a Saviour, 
to grant repentance and the remission of sins." 

2. It creates in us a hatred of the selfishness 
of sin. 

The more we love the beautiful purity of Je- 
sus, the more affectionate faith we have in Him 
who "is the propitiation for our sins, and not 
for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole 
world," the more our sins will fall from us, and 
thus by our love for Him, created in us by His 
love for us, does the "Lamb of God" "take 
away the sins of the world," We cannot hate 
sin and hate Jesus at the same time. We can- 
not love Jesus and love sin at the same time. 
One passion will expel the other. Our confes- 
sion of Jesus is a necessary declaration of war 



against our own sinfulness. This faith works by 
love and purifies the heart. 

3. It saves us from unrest. 

It gives us peace with God. We cease to 
fight Him, because we cease to regard Him as 
our enemy. He has come to the world in Jesus, 
whom He has raised from the dead, for the 
world's salvation. This sublime demonstration 
of divine amity takes away all ground of ani- 
mosity. To sin against God now is to intensify 
spiritual rebellion by the grossest ingratitude. 
We might believe on Him with our heads and 
fight Him, but we cannot with our hearts believe 
in Him and keep up war with our best friend. 

4. It saves us from moral weakness. 

Our affectionate faith makes us "strong in the 
Lord and in the power of His might." We 
know what a hearty faith in a cause or a leader 
does for soldiers, how it animates and enforces 
them, how it drives them into all heroism and 
quickens all their powers. A true Christian be- 
lieves that the " Captain of his salvation" can 
never be conquered. He is ready to follow that 
matchless Leader, and under Him to fight the 
great moral battles of life, especially those ter- 
rific battles which must be fought silently in the 
heart, where his tender love and unconquerable 
faith in Jesus are the forces he hurls against all 
his spiritual foes. 

And now, my brethren, there are many of you 
whose hearts lean believingly toward Jesus. You 
have not yet, with your mouths, made confes- 
sion unto salvation. I will not condemn your 
motives, I will not even censure them ; but I 
must insist upon practical proofs of whatever 
faith you have in Jesus and whatever love you 
feel for Him. 

"It is not the Church that can save you;" 
that I know quite as well as you do : but I do 
know also that no man can long have a faith 
which does not work and a love that is forever 
dumb. You owe it to Jesus, every man of you, 
to be openly on His side, and you who do not 
take sides openly with scoffers and unbelievers, 
give them the whole advantage of your influ- 
ence, as society in Christendom hereafter must 
be divided into those who confess Jesus and those 
who do not. 

Your faith in Jesus is leading you into much 
righteousness, to real undeniable goodness of 
living, and yet your silence, your secret disciple- 
ship is depriving you of the full power and 
pleasure of salvation. Let your hearts follow 
your heads, and let your mouths follow your 
hearts, and you will be led into all righteousness 
and all salvation. 



Faith and Confession. 



285 



You who have made confession it is my duty 
to remind, that all faith that is merely the cold 
assent of your intellects to the proved facts of 
the history of Jesus is fruitless. Your love must 
be where your faith is. You must be passion- 
ately devoted to the person of Jesus. Then 
your lives will be fruitful in righteousness, and 
your souls will be filled with the joys of God's 
salvation. 



And now, let us all bow ourselves in silent 
prayer and thanksgiving to the "God and 
Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, 
who according to His abundant mercy hath be- 
gotten us again unto a lively hope by the resur- 
rection of Jesus Christ from the dead." Let us 
praise Him for all He hath done for our salva- 
tion, and pray for the grace of faith to trust Him 
and the grace of courage to confess Him. 



XXXVIII. 

8bt HfUnumal jPujrpn. 

•'THIS DO YE IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME."— LUKE, XXII. 1 9. 

" AS OFTEN AS YE EAT THIS BREAD AND DRINK THIS CUP, YE DO SHOW THE LORD S DEATH TILL 
HE COME." 1 COR. XI. 26. 



It was the last meal of Jesus with His disciples 
before His death. 

It was Thursday night. There would be no 
breakfast on Friday morning, but betrayal, 
denial, indignities, outrages, and crucifixion. 

They were alone now, in an upper room. 
They were eating the Passover. The whole 
week had been turbulent, and the Master had 
been variously assailed by the malice of His 
foes, but the disciples were anticipating no such 
thing as His betrayal and His crucifixion. They 
had such confidence in His purity and might 
that they did not seem capable of understanding 
that He could or would allow Himself to be 
captured and slain. 

But He knew all that was coming. He knew 
what wretched amazement would be upon their 
souls next night, how they would be scattered as 
sheep without a shepherd, and He loved them. 

All the tenderness of His soul came forth at 
his last meal. He could never have been more 
beautiful than when He brake the bread and 
gave it to them, nor more sublime than when 
He gently gave Judas to know that He was 
aware of the fact that Judas was to betray Him. 
They had eaten the Passover together with their 
Lord, before ; but Jesus never could have seemed 
to be intensely absorbed in all the solemn service 
and so deeply interested in the disciples as now. 

His disciples could perceive that : indeed, they 
could hardly have failed to perceive that. Per- 
haps the very struggle for precedence at the 
table, which became so ungenerous, and which 
led the Lord to give them the impressive lesson 
of the washing of feet, may have come from love, 
and a desire to be nearest the dear Master when 
He seemed so attractive. He was so tender to 
them all ! 

In using the bread and wine of the Paschal 
feast He appropriated to Himself all that they 
could typify of the Saviour of the world. This 
He did in the words of the text. They must, at 



least, have understood that whenever they should 
break and eat the bread at the Passover feasts, 
they should have Him in their minds. 

We must recollect, dear brethren, that we now 
know much more than those disciples did then. 
They did not know that the Passover was to be 
so fulfilled, and taken up in Him, that there 
would be no need of its ever being again cele- 
brated after the manner of their forefathers. 
They did not know that Jesus was about to die, 
the just for the unjust, to bring us unto God. 
They did not know that He was to be the pro- 
pitiation for the sins of the whole world. They 
did not know that He was to be raised again for 
our justification. They did not know that He 
was to ascend into the heavens leading captivity 
captive, and giving gifts unto men, especially 
the great gift of the Holy Spirit. 

All the world, and time, and eternity, and 
Jesus, and themselves, all stood in very different 
relationship on the following Monday. And the 
Forty Days which followed the Resurrection 
made more difference in the views of these men 
than all their previous lives had done. And when 
Pentecost came with the outpouring of the Holy 
Spirit, it revealed a new universe. In the mate- 
rial world, in the first beginning there had been 
the creation, and then God commanded light 
and the products of creative power were seen : 
in the spiritual world, in the second beginning, 
there had been the life and death of Jesus, His 
works and His sacrifice : but they were invisible 
until the gift of the Holy Spirit, like the creation 
of a second light, set all this new orderly universe 
under a spiritual splendor. 

At the moment when our text comes in, these 
men were amid the throes of this new creation, 
confounded by the roar and rush which attended 
this new creation. To them the Jewish Religion 
was to endure not only in its spirit, but in its 
letter. And so, that Thursday night, perhaps 
all they saw in the saying of Jesus, was, that as 



The Memorial Supper. 



often as they ate bread and drank wine, certainly 
as often as they partook the Paschal bread, they 
should remember Him, and somehow see some 
connection between His real life and the sym- 
bolism of all bread, especially of that bread of 
ceremony. 

But afterward they knew something more and 
better. 

No wonder that, after His departure and all 
the teachings of the Forty Days and all the 
revelations of Pentecost, the lovers of Jesus 
should appoint set times and places for the break- 
ing of bread and the outpouring of wine, in re- 
membrance of Him, and should call it affection- 
ately, as we do, "The Lord's Supper." 

In his account of this last meal of Jesus with 
his disciples, Paul, in the eleventh chapter of 
his first Epistle to the Corinthians, says : " I have 
received of the Lord that which also I have de- 
livered unto you, that the Lord Jesus the same 
nighf in which He was betrayed took bread, and 
when he had given thanks, He brake it, and 
said, Take, eat, this is my body which is broken 
for you : this do in remembrance of Me. After 
the same manner also He took the cup when He 
had supped, saying : This cup is the new testa- 
ment in my blood : This do ye, as oft as ye 
drink it, in remembrance of ME. For as oft as 
ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show 
the Lord's death till He come." 

The difference between Paul and the others, 
is, that they heard the words before the death, 
burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, and 
the revelation of Pentecost, and he after. They 
did not perceive that Jesus was instituting a 
sacrament; and yet, on the basis of their love for 
Him, it necessarily came to be such, and as 
•such it was at Paul's time of writing, such it 
has continued through the ages, such it is now, 
as such it is this day celebrated by thousands and 
hundreds of thousands of adoring lovers of Je- 
sus, all over the world. 

Let us consider the broadest meaning which 
the words, as reported by Luke and colored by 
Paul, may have conveyed to the minds of the 
Apostles at the original utterance. 

Might they not have implied that whenever 
they ate bread, under any circumstances, and 
whenever they drank wine, under any circum- 
stances, there should, after His death, be in the 
disciples of Jesus a sacramental sense ? All 
bread should represent His body : all wine should 
represent His blood. All eating and drinking 
should remind them how He had given Himself 
for the world, how He had poured out His blood 
for sinners. 



If you will look in your Bibles you will see that 
in i Corinthians, xi. 25. the word "it" is printed 
in italics, which means that it is not in the origi- 
nal, but was supplied by the translators to make 
their sense. Paul wrote the words thus : " This 
do, as often as you drink, in remembrance of 
ME." 

Now, suppose all people would so apply the 
words of our dear Lord : how utterly gluttony 
and drunkenness would be banished from the 
world ! Every dinner would then be a holy re- 
membrancer of the loftiest self-sacrifice the uni- 
verse ever knew : every drop of wine would be 
taken sacramentally. There could be no beastly 
overfeeding then. There could be no drunken- 
ness, no bacchanal songs to urge on to excess of 
wine, but every meal would come to be healthy 
and holy, and men's souls would be nourished 
while their bodies were fed. 

And should it not be so, my brethren ? As 
Jesus has created bread, and broken it and sancti- 
fied it by the holy association of bread with Him- 
self, should not all our feasts be chastened and 
sweetened by pure and sweet thoughts of Him ? 
How dare any of you drink wine at your own 
tables or elsewhere for mere exhilaration, when 
Jesus has said, "As oft as ye drink, do this in 
remembrance of ME?" How dare you have 
your champagne suppers and drink deeply, 
drink with ribald jokes, when Jesus has set wine 
in the sanctity of representing all that is sacred 
in suffering and all that is solemn in human sal- 
vation ? If men would keep these views before 
them they would revolutionize society more than 
any of the efforts of our Temperance organiza- 
tions, useful as they are 'to society. Every meal 
would become in some lovely and profitable sense 
a " Lord's Supper," all bodily refreshment a 
spiritual sacrament, and the communion of be- 
lievers with their Lord would be delightfully 
constant. 

Supposing such a state of mind and heart to 
have existed in the early believers, it is quite easy 
to perceive how it would have grown into the 
''Lord's Supper," even if there had been no 
formal "institution," as it is called by the dear 
Lord Himself. If He had said, " As oft as ye 
eat bread and drink wine do it in memory of Me," 
those who loved Him would naturally eat and 
drink Memorial Suppers together, and love would 
build these into an institution in the Church. 
That He knew it would be so, none who love 
Him can doubt : and so the Eucharist has been 
" instituted 1 ' by Jesus in the very best sense and 
on the only secure basis. It does not rest on the 
command of authority but on the request of love. 



238 



The Memorial Supper. 



Its observance is not so much obedience to law 
as gratification of the affections. It is not so 
much for our great Friend's sake as for our own 
that we keep this sacred feast. 

Let us spend a few moments before the Holy 
Communion this morning in reflecting upon what 
this Memorial Supper does for ourselves. 

It keeps before us the fact of the existence of 
such a character as that of Jesus. 

Amid our own faults and failures, in a world 
of errors, blunders, wrongs, crimes, and outrages, 
which come to our knowledge so thick and fast 
that we sometimes begin to lose faith in the ex- 
istence of virtue, and all life seems a chaos of 
mingled good and evil, with all kinds of uncer- 
tainties, it is a moral tonic to have before us such 
a character as the Holy Scriptures assign to Jesus. 

Suppose no such life as His ever was lived on 
earth : here is a character portrayed in the four 
Evangelists, the presentation of which has done 
for the morals of the world more than all the 
wise precepts of virtue which all other books 
contain. It is a character. If you say that it is 
an ideal, suppose that be granted : it is an idea : 
an idea is much : ideas govern the world. Here 
we see what men can fancy a man to be. If such 
intellectual qualities be in the minds of men that 
they can think of such a character, when it never 
existed, and such moral qualities be in the hearts 
of men that they can love such a character when 
painted, then surely there must be sufficient 
vigor and disposition in the will to urge men to 
attempt to reproduce in their actual lives in some 
measure that marvellous beauty which they have 
produced in their books. 

I believe that the fad that such an ideal now 
exists in books is prima facie evidence that some- 
how, somewhere, it has existed in the ranks of 
humanity. 

Whether that be so or not, the partaking of 
the Memorial Supper keeps before us the thought 
of a character so strong and so gentle, so great 
and so humble, so powerful and so tender, so 
equipoised, so self-sustained, so divinely human 
and so humanly divine, that we go down from 
the table with a finer strain in our characters, 
with better courage to fight down the evil that is 
in us, with better hopes for the growth of good- 
ness on the soil of man, and in every way bet- 
ter, stronger, wiser, than we were before. 

In the next place, it reminds us of the lofty life 
of Jesus. 

That Jesus lived among us no man now doubts 
who has intelligence enough to examine the evi- 
dence, and has fairly done so, except such as are 
exceptionally so peculiarly constituted that they 



cannot believe that any one ever lived whom they 
have not seen. 

But those who believe confidently in the exist- 
ence of such a life among the generations of men 
need to have their own virtue reinforced by per- 
petual pictures of all that Jesus did among men. 
Our portraits, photographs, biographies, busts, 
statues, anniversaries, are helps to keep virtue 
known to succeeding generations. When our 
children see a statue in the Park, they naturally 
ask whose it is, and when the name of the origi- 
nal is told the next word of the thoughtful child 
is, " what did he do ?" 

It is not Calvary only, nor Gethsemane, nor 
the Last Supper, which the Eucharist calls to our 
minds, but all that life which, from the soft in- 
fancy in Bethlehem and the years of retirement 
in Nazareth, went forth to the Inauguration at 
Jordan, the Temptation, the Transfiguration, 
and the Crucifixion, with all its miracles of mercy, 
the opening of the eyes of the blind, the cleans- 
ing of lepers, the casting out of devils, the cure 
of deafness, and the raising of the dead, with the 
miraculous, instantaneous making of wine for 
hundreds and bread for thousands, with all His 
circuits of preaching, with all His resistance of 
evil, with all His sweet, pure intercourse with His 
disciples and with society, at the Cana wedding 
and the feasts of publican and of Pharisee, at 
Peter's Capernaum home, and the Bethany nest 
of love where Lazarus and Mary and Martha 
dwelt, and with His dear hands laid tenderly, 
with benediction, on the heads of babes, and 
with John's head on His shoulder, and His glance 
at the denying Apostle, the glance of love which 
broke Peter's heart, and all His conduct upon 
the cross, and all He did after His resurrection, 
and that last sight which men had of Him when 
the cloud caught Him from the gaze of human 
love into the eternal heavens. 

This Eucharistic feast brings that whole life 
back to us, with all its power to comfort and 
capability to instruct. It is God's great call to 
us to make ourselves pure and beautiful and 
sublime. 

Moreover, this Memorial Supper recalls to us 
all the gracious words of Jesus. 

What else did He say who said, " This do in 
remembrance of Me ?" 

At that question all He taught begins to come 
back to us, the Mount-Sermon, the manifold 
and variegated parable, the doctrines, the pre- 
cepts, the promises, the gracious words that pro- 
ceeded out of the mouth of Him who spoke as 
never man spoke, the thoughts that breathed 
the breath of the Spirit of God and the words 



The Memorial Supper. 



239 



that have burned themselves into so many human 
hearts and burned their sins away. 

'•'The words of Jesus:" how many a long- 
sick, love-sick, home-sick soul they have cheered, 
how many a darkened intellect they have illu- 
minated, how many a weak soul they have 
strengthened ! How many have employed them 
as their battle-cries in the conflicts with sin, and 
their songs in the bearing of their burdens, and 
their cheer in the dark valley of the shadow of 
death ! Oh ! all His words must have meant 
good, whose almost last word was a request 
that all who loved Him, should remember 
Him whenever their bodies received nourish- 
ment ! 

His utterances have changed the whole current 
of human thought. There is not a word that 
proceeded out of His mouth which would have 
been improper to be spoken by the Almighty 
Father, if He chose to come and dwell in the flesh. 
And all those words were words of love. And 
now at last, as He goes, He turns fondly back 
upon us, and says with deathless love and ex- 
quisite pathos, " Remember ME." What was it 
to Him whether we remembered Him or not? 
He believed He was going back home to heaven, 
to be among the angels and rule the worlds of 
light. Yet, up there, ensphered in boundless 
power and matchless light, He will love us so 
that He cannot bear to be forgotten by His 
human friends, and so His last "good-night" is 
the sweet plea, "Remember Me: do this; 
when you eat bread and drink wine, remember 
Me : and eat bread and drink wine that you may 
remember ME." O what a strain of music all 
those utterances must have been, the last cadence 
of which is this word whose tender pathos melts 
the hearts of angels and of men ! 

To us, dear brethren, this Supper brings also 
vividly to view the atoning death of Jesus. 

It did not do so to the first disciples. When 
Jesus uttered the words they were in the turbu- 
lence of uncertain grief, knowing that some great 
catastrophe impended. They knew not what 
it was, nor when, nor how, nor why it should 
fall on Him and crush them. 

We know it, now. We know why He who 
had all power succumbed to the puny arm of 
human creatures. We know why He who could 
raise the dead, did give Himself to death. We 
know that He was bruised for our iniquities, and 
that with His stripes we are healed. We know 
that when He fainted, He was carrying our 
griefs. When we eat this bread, . it recalls the 
manglement of Jesus, and our hearts tell us that 
it was done not for Himself, but for us. When 



we drink this wine, we know that the shed blood 
was not spilt in hate, nor in strife, but in sublime 
self-sacrifice for us. 

It is the only relief for us. Men dare not 
think of themselves and God at the same 
moment, except in Jesus. A sinner must forget 
God or himself, or be wretched ; or, he may 
remember Jesus, and remember himself and be 
happy. Jesus is proof that God is love ; and we 
must believe that, if as sinners we dare make 
any approach to God. "I remembered God 
and was troubled," says David: "Remember 
ME, and let not your heart be troubled," says 
Jesus. Jesus did not die in order to win for us 
the favor of God, but to prove to us the love of 
God. And so we dare think of the holy God 
and our own unholy selves, here, at this table, 
because this supper reminds us of the blood 
of the atonement, as the Paschal wine reminded 
the Jews of the merciful deliverance of their 
ancestors from the Egyptian trouble. As Paul 
says, "we joy in God through our Lord Jesus 
Christ, by whom we have received the atone- 
ment." 

Lastly. This Memorial Supper reminds us of 
the personal friendship of Jesus. 

He says, " Lo ! I am with you always" — every 
day, it is in the original — " even to the end of 
the world." When our friends die our hearts 
follow them. They may fly through the gates 
of the grave, but they cannot escape us. Our 
hearts are with them every day. Jesus said that 
when He should go within the veil He would be 
with us every day. He made sure that the words 
should not be confined to the disciples who lis- 
tened to Him, by adding, " even unto the end of 
the world." 

Every man needs at least one friend whom he 
can trust through all the changes and treachery 
of the world, a friend of wisdom and of power. 
We have such a friend. At the Memorial Sup- 
per we remind ourselves of Him. It is as when 
we set an empty chair beside our table for the 
parent or husband or child or brother or lover 
whom we are expecting. He may come while 
we are dining. "Ye do show forth the Lord's 
death until He come," says Paul. The dear 
Lord ! Then He will come sometime ? Then 
He must be my friend always, desiring to come, 
and coming ! 

Every souvenir any friend has given me, not 
only indulges his desire to be remembered, but 
is for me a comfort and a support. Each book 
and pen and inkstand and picture and lamp 
tells me I have a friend. At this Supper I am 
most tenderly reminded that One is my friend 



240 



The Memorial Supper. 



who will never leave nor forsake me, because He 
loved me, knowing all my faults. 

It is for myself that I remember Him. Darkness 
may be on me. My affairs have become entan- 
gled. My sorrows seem greater than the sorrows 
of any other man. I am in spiritual eclipse. One 
of my friends has denied me. Another has be- 
trayed. All have forsaken me. My career seems 
to be about to close in bloody gloom. And then 
God shuts His face from me. O my soul, what 
shall I do ? What shall I do in this hour and 
power of darkness ! Hark ! There comes a sweet 
sound through the hurtling dark, a sweet voice, 
" Remember ME !" It is my friend. It is Jesus. 
He hath borne it all. He will never, never, nev- 
er forsake me. Oh, I had thought that it was for 
His own sake that He had said, " Do this in re- 
membrance of ME," but now I find that it was 
for the solace of my soul, when my soul most 
needs the consolation. 

Dear brethren, we owe something to Jesus, 
as our friend, in presenting Him to the world : 
and this great, beautiful duty we partly perform 
in the Memorial Supper. 

(i.) It is a historic fact that our dear Friend died 
under a cloud. He was condemned by courts 
ecclesiastical and civil, after some form of trial, 
and He died upon the Roman gallows. The ob- 
vious close of His life was that of a condemned 
malefactor. Now, He was either bad or good. 
He either deserved his sufferings or He did not. 
To a generous soul nothing is more painful than 
to have his good friend misunderstood and mis- 
represented. Do we believe that Jesus was the 
benefactor of the race, its greatest and best friend, 
and that He was innocent ? Then, if he has de- 
vised any way which will attest His innocence to 
the world, every man that believes in Him ought 
to employ that means to vindicate that innocence. 

When a man is conscious of being guilty of a 
great crime, and is about to suffer a conspicuous 
punishment, it is natural that he should wish all 
record of the transaction to die out of the memo- 
ries of men. In most cases he commits his crimes 
under an assumed name. 

But when he is innocent, he desires future gen- 
erations to reverse the verdict of his own times 
and vindicate his fair fame. Jesus did so. He 
so desired and he so contrived. The Memorial 
Supper is the arrangement. He taught that 
those who loved Him should remember Him 
whenever they ate bread or drank wine. It was 
most simple and most effectual. Everywhere 
men would drink wine or eat bread. Wherever 
two men had the same lofty association they 
would come together. Coming together, they 



would eat together. Eating thus together, there 
would be the Memorial Supper, and so His name 
should never die out among men. 

He thus laid the foundation of His empire in 
the hearts of men. If He had been conscious 
that He was an impostor, that He was a sly, 
shrewd politician, who had planned for an uprising 
against the Roman Empire and had failed, and 
in His failure had brought unhappiness on His 
nation and special wretchedness upon those most 
devoted to Him, do you suppose it possible that 
He would have contrived to keep His memory 
always before the world? If He had not believed 
that He was innocent, and that His innocence 
would some day be established, and that He was 
more than innocent, that He was dying a sub- 
lime death, a death which should be the glory 
of His own age, and which should consecrate 
even the engine of His last torture, making the 
cross an emblem of goodness and of victory, — 
do you suppose that He would have contrived to 
keep His memory always before the world ? 

This supper is a Memorial of His innocence. 
The men and women and children that eat this 
bread and drink this wine believe that He was 
innocent. Every man and woman and child 
who believes that Jesus was innocent owes it to 
the noblest soul that ever wore flesh about it 
to stand up for His innocence, to vote for a re- 
versal of the hideous decree which sent Him to 
the cross, and to attest the grandeur of the Man 
who endured so great a martyrdom. The fact 
that Jesus instituted the Memorial is His evi- 
dence that He knew Himself to be innocent, and 
the fact that it survives is the proof of Providence 
and the seal of God to the goodness of Jesus. 

(2.) Moreover, it is a proclamation of the res- 
urrection of Jesus. 

If He had not risen from the dead, we could 
not thus keep Him in remembrance, nor could 
the early disciples have done so : because, the 
fact that he lay decaying in the grave would 
have left His life and character, wonderful as 
they were, an enigma and a puzzle. It would 
have taken all significance out of His speech. It 
would have exposed His vain pretensions and fal- 
sified His audacious prophecies and rebuked what 
then would be His proven blasphemies. We pro- 
claim to the world that Jesus still exists, soul and 
body together, "this same Jesus," and that He 
will come again, and that we ought to be expect- 
ing Him. Paul says, " Ye do show" — and the 
word means herald and proclaim — " the Lord's 
death, till He come again." 

We owe it to the world to let them know that 
Jesus died, and that He rose again, and that He 



The Memorial Supper. 



341 



will come again. There is no better manner than 
by the simple Memorial Supper. Men will know 
at least that we believe in Him, that we love Him, 
that we incend forever to stand by His innocence, 
and they may be led to make inquiries which 
shall lead the most unbelieving and the most 
disbelieving among them to know the facts and 
become partakers of like precious faith. 

Now, brethren, there is something else about 
this last request of love which it will be worth 
while to consider before we part. 

It has been obeyed. 

Reflect upon the beauty and grandeur of this 
historic fact. A simple man, not a priest, not a 
politician, not a soldier, was going to die. He 
had been a popular public speaker. He had at- 
tracted great crowds. At times he had excited 
immense enthusiasm. But His popularity had 
waned. The fickle people had dropped from 
Him. They no longer followed Him with ho- 
sanna shouts. His own nation were seeking to 
deliver Him up to their conquerors. He was at 
His last supper with twelve friends. He gave 
them bread to eat and wine to drink. He asked 
them, whenever they had such a supper, to eat 
and drink in remembrance of Him. One of them 
went out and betrayed Him. Next day He was 
nailed to a cross, and died thereon as a malefac- 
tor. The man who betrayed Him perished hor- 
ribly. The other eleven kept the supper after 
His death, and taught others to keep it, having 
taught them to love Him. To do this exposed 
them for years to be hunted, to be imprisoned, 
to be beaten, and to be slaughtered like wild 
beasts. 

And that generation passed away, and that 
century closed, and a hundred years after His 
death more people loved Him, and loved Him 
better, than when He died. They were caught, 
confined, and starved. Privation could not starve 
out the love. They were thrown into the amphi- 
theatre, old men and tender virgins. The hun- 
gry lions could not tear their love for that dead 
man out of their faithful hearts. They were 
bound to stakes. Fagots were piled about them 
and kindled. Some were rolled in pitch and 
placed as torches in emperors' gardens, and set 
on fire. The flames could not burn their love 
for that dead man out of their ardent hearts. In 
catacombs under populous cities, in savage places 
in the wilderness, in caverns in the mountains, 
in private chambers, in chapels and churches and 
cathedrals, in camps and cabinets, on shipboard, 
in all kinds of places, men with crowns upon 
their heads, men in pontifical robes, men hel- 
meted and booted and spurred for war, great- 



eyed poets, and high-browed scholars, and rude 
rustics, and queens and milkmaids, and virgins 
in white robes, and boys, and knights stricken 
with mortal wounds, and people in their death- 
throes, have eaten this bread and drunk this cup 
in remembrance of Jesus. 

The request was made more than eighteen 
centuries ago, made in the secret chamber of an 
obscure house in a city beyond the Mediterra- 
nean. That city has been beaten by the storms 
of war over and oft. Dynasties have risen and 
fallen. The morning and evening sacrifice have 
ceased, and the splendid Temple-service of Je- 
rusalem has disappeared. The dark ages have 
come and gone. Science has lifted its light on 
the nations. Amid darkness and light, amid 
anarchy and order, men in almost every clime 
and of almost every tongue, have maintained the 
observance of this Memorial Supper. There has 
not been a day, since you were born, in which 
men have not been eating this bread and drink- 
ing this cup. All the institutions of any mere 
man which were existing when Jesus died have 
perished. But to-day, and here, on this far 
western coast, on this island, which was then 
unknown to geographers, hundreds of us will 
tenderly take and reverently use these His 
appointed symbols of loving remembrance. 

Who was this — oh, let me ask any unbeliev- 
ing heart in this assembly — who was this man 
that could so win the love of the world to him- 
self that his dying request is better and more 
largely kept this day than it was when he first 
departed ? Why has no other man been able to 
do anything like this ? Is it not the most beau- 
tiful fact in all history? Is it not the most sub- 
lime triumph of love ? 

Will any of you decline to share it? Each 
man that obeys this request does his manly part 
in standing up in vindication of this best friend 
he ever had. If your brother that had lived for 
you and died for you, and in dying had asked 
that you would now and then perform a simple 
act, to tell the world that you remembered him 
and believed in him and loved him, would any 
of you decline ? Put it to your manhood if this 
is not what you do every time you refuse this 
Sacrament of Immortal Love. 

Some of you are old and grayheaded, and 
never yet have you performed this sacred duty. 
You have eaten bread from His hand and 
drunk the wine He has furnished, now these 
scores of years: will you die having never 
placed a crumb on your lip or drop on your 
tongue in remembrance of Jesus? O, by the 
deep, unspoken desire of your souls, that He will 



The Memorial Supper. 



remember you when He comes upon His judg- 
ment-throne, I beseech you " do this in remem- 
brance of Him." 

Beloved brethren, who profess to love Him, let 
me implore you to remove this His dying request 
out of the circle of duty and place it in the 
sphere of love. Do not say, "Must I do it?" 
but with overflowing hearts exclaim, ''May I? 
May I do anything to show the world that I 
remember Jesus ?" Let us all learn to say ten- 
derly of Him, what one has said of his dead 



friend, and what can never by any be so truly 
uttered as it may be of Jesus : 

" Known and unknown, human, divine ! 
Sweet human hand and lip and eye, 
Dear heavenly friend that canst not die, 
Mine, mine forever, ever mine ! 

" Strange friend, past, present, and to be, 
Loved deeplier, darklier understood, 
Behold, I dream a dream of good, 
And mingle all the world with thee !** 



XXXIX. 

" BELOVED, NOW ARE WE THE SONS OF GOD, AND IT DOTH NOT YET APPEAR WHAT WE SHALL BE . 
BUT WE KNOW THAT, WHEN HE SHALL APPEAR, WE SHALL BE LIKE HIM J FOR WE SHALL SEE 
HIM AS HE IS." 1 JOHN, III. 2. 



The first statement of the text is as sublime 
as it is simple : "We are the sons of God." 

A moment's reflection should convince any 
reasonable man that this proposition, if it be 
true, is not only consoling but is absolutely ne- 
cessary to be known to shape the character and 
guide the conduct of men. 

No relation involving moral action is unim- 
portant. The highest possible relation must be 
supremely important. The very highest rela- 
tion must be that which we sustain to God, the 
Infinite Greatest Being. 

Every man is raised or lowered by his closest 
connections, whether of association, marriage, 
or blood. 

Whoever has engaged in the improvement of 
stock, has satisfied himself that there is some- 
thing in blood. In England and in America 
such attention has been paid to this subject that 
the pedigrees of " blooded " horses is as carefully 
preserved as the pedigrees of noble families, 
and, alas ! are often much more trustworthy. 
The price of a horse is affected by certified as- 
surances as to what horse was his sire and which 
was his dam. 

This transmission and this mixture of traits 
can be demonstrated among other animals just 
as well. John Randolph of Roanoke did many 
an unwise and said many a foolish thing, but he 
never uttered a more certain truth than when he 
said, "There's as much in the blood of men as 
of horses." When you are selecting a man for 
a very important position toward you, your lieu- 
tenant for war, your partner for business, your 
husband for life, you not only need to know 
him, but you need to know who his father and 
mother were, especially his mother, and who 
their parents were. It is not the fortune of the 
family that is important, but the blood ; for the 
noblest blood in men and women may pass 
through generations of poverty, and the dirtiest 
blood may contrive by means that are base to 



have itself clothed in purple and fine linen. But, 
as our English cousins say, " Blood will tell." 

Not only the fact of his parentage and ances- 
try tells upon a man's character and conduct, 
but also his knowledge of the fact. He may 
feel aspirations toward goodness and greatness, 
not knowing of whom he was begotten, for the 
gypsies may have stolen him in his infancy: 
but let him discover that his father and grand- 
father, his mother and grandmother, were peo- 
ple of exalted worth and reputation, and how 
rapidly he feels all his best aspirations stimu- 
lated ! 

Now, if it be so that we cannot make out all 
the links in the chain of ancestry, but can have 
the assurance that the Founder of our House is 
the King of the Universe, we have a great and 
sudden spiritual exhilaration. 

But, if each man can have the conviction that 
God is his father, not figuratively and mystic- 
ally, but literally and actually, there must come 
into that man's character a new element of ex- 
altation as well as of comfort. If such a man 
begin to go astray, you have, for ground of ap- 
peal, not only that venerable human father and 
his white hairs, that aged mother on whose 
heart time has had only a mellowing influence, 
not only his long line of unsullied ancestry, — 
but, above all, God ! And God, not as a Cre- 
ator and Ruler, but as a Father literally. 

The proposition is true or false. If false, men 
ought to stop the hurtful nonsense of talking of 
the ''fatherhood of God," and Christians ought 
to throw their Bibles away. If true, and we are 
bound to believe it if we believe the Bible to be 
the Word of God, then we should accept it as 
the first fundamental law of our theology and 
the most active element in our thoughts, our 
emotions, our volitions, and our actions. 

I do believe it. It is taken into my mind and 
heart in the most simple, child-like, manly way 
in which it is possible for me to receive any 



Sons of God. 



proposition : and I am very solicitous to have 
you believe it in the same manner. I am more 
than willing that all my people should under- 
stand explicitly what I do believe in regard to 
this, and therefore you will pardon the personal 
way in which I put it. u l believe in God the 
Father Almighty that is, that Almighty God 
is my Father ; that is, that I have three parents, 
all of whom were concerned in the production 
of my existence, and that I am literally a son of 
George and Mary Deems and of Almighty God, 
not created by that man, nor by that woman, nor 
by that God, but begotten and conceived, so 
that, while my body comes of these human par- 
ents, my soul comes of that immortal Parent, 
God being, as Luther says, my Father and my 
Mother. 

What I believe of myself in this regard, I 
believe of each of you, and salute you all, in 
the language of St. John, and congratulate- you 
all, " Beloved, now are we the sons of God! 
Behold, what manner of love the Father has 
bestowed upon us that we should be called the 
sons of God." 

This is plain revelation. On this we may 
plant ourselves. If men bring us hard things 
out of the Bible and out of science, we can reit- 
erate this statement, "Now are we the sons of 
God." 

I know some of the difficulties men will bring 
forward to bother us. They will tell us to read 
a little further down this chapter, repeating the 
words, "Whosoever is born of God doth not 
commit sin. In this the children of God are 
manifest, and the children of the devil." We 
must never abandon our common -sense in read- 
ing our Bibles. Our theories of interpretation 
must agree with the facts. The devil is a son 
of God, and he became a devil by sinning. He 
never begat and conceived a soul. He could 
not ; and no man can. God created the body 
of Adam and begat his soul. He took the body 
of Eve from that of Adam, but he begat her 
soul. He so created the first two bodies that 
they should be the parents of all other bodies as 
He is the Parent of all souls. 

It is just because we are the children of God 
that we can sin. His creatures cannot: a tree 
or a rock cannot sin. We must have freedom 
of will to be capable of sinning. The devil is 
the most mighty of sinners, the chief leader of 
the rebellion against God, and when we sin we 
become his children figuratively, as men have 
been called "Sons of Belial," "Sons of Lib- 
erty." To suppose that the devil ever actually 
begat a child is perfectly horrible. But it is a 



sublime idea that God is the Father of the spir- 
its of all men. All men are taught by Jesus to 
address God in prayer as "Our Father:" but 
no man could make that address to the Evil 
One. 

The man who has sinned has forgotten that 
God was his Father. The man who repents 
recollects that God is his Father, and comes 
back and is " born again," as the Prodigal Son 
had all the sense of a new birth when he was 
received again into his father's arms and house- 
hold. We receive the spirit of adoption whereby 
we call God " Abba, Father," and so long as a 
man keeps before his eyes and heartily rejoices 
in the fact that he is God's son, by original birth 
and by the new birth, he does not sin. Under 
such sentiments, no man ever did and no man 
ever can sin. 

I know what difficulties modern science — 
much of it falsely so called — brings forward to 
bother us in regard to our paternity, presenting 
many things which are indubitable facts, and 
weaving them in with many other things which 
are mere assumptions. 

Let us not be frightened with all this parade 
of learning about the " genesis of species." A 
sensible farmer goes on raising his grasses and 
his grains and his fruits out of the soil as it now 
is on our planet as it now is, although he has 
no time to inquire into the theories of cosmogony 
which the learned scholars are propounding and 
combating. We need never be scared and solicit- 
ous for the fate of our dear old Bible. Whenever 
anything is well settled as real science, it finds 
the Bible written as though prepared ages ago 
to be ready for the discoveries of the Now. 

All that men can deal with is the origin and 
the development of our physical nature. No 
matter what they prove about that, they have no 
data, even the slightest, to begin any investiga- 
tion into the origin of soul : and our souls are 
the most important part of us. We can know 
nothing of that origin unless it be revealed to us. 
The real man is in the soul, and the word of 
God tells us that He breathed that into the body 
of the first man of whom we have any historic 
record. 

Now, brethren, what does it concern us as to . 
what happened in the previous history of those 
physical elements which make man, or indeed 
with their origin ? What is it to us if the first 
sign of organic life be detected in a monad or 
a fungus, and that from these ungainly begin- 
nings there was an energy which struggled and 
struggled until there stood forth a goodly Adam 
and a comely Eve to be the first recipients of 



Sons of God. 



245 



human souls ? These curious scientific gentle- 
men may detect those rudest beginnings in 
something the like of which has been on earth 
from the first of matter, through all the physi- 
cal convulsions of the planet, or, as the Presi- 
dent of the British Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science a few weeks ago set forth, in 
some fungus of another planet which clung to 
ours in the collision of worlds and found a con- 
genial soil, and grew and gathered and im- 
proved until it flowered forth into completest 
manhood. What is that to us ? 

Science may push as far back as it can into 
eternity, but whenever and wherever animal life 
is found in its feeblest possible pulsation, under 
the least organic of all possible organisms, then 
and there stands at the commencement of ani- 
mal life an inexorable demand for a Creator : 
and whenever and wherever there comes to be a 
man in body, then and there there is an inexorable 
demand for a Father, for the body cannot be- 
come a man without a soul, and there can be no 
soul if it do not come from the Father of lights 
and of spirits. 

I am very, very, very far from having been 
persuaded to agree to the proposition that a line 
of monsters, monkeys, and monads, were among 
my ancestors. I think there are scientific rea- 
sons for rejecting the doctrine. But if ever 
that doctrine should be substantiated against all 
my prepossessions, then my prejudices should 
yield to reason, but I know the Bible would be 
found right at the last. Then I should look all 
my grim and grinning and stupid ante-Adamic 
ancestors in the face and shout at them all, 
" Whatever you were, ye monads, ye monkeys, 
and ye monsters, as for me and these my breth- 
ren, Now are We the Sons of God!" 

And, dearly beloved brethren, there is nothing 
grander to be said about us than that ! 

It lays the origin of man in God. It is 
the suggestion of all the orderliness of the 
universe, of a vast family, constantly growing, 
spreading itself far and wide, not simply over 
this little planet, but overall the universe, — kept 
together in vastest household economy and in 
most blessed and fruitful brotherhood by the 
paternal headship of the Almighty Father, 
adorned and beautified by all His taste, educated 
by processes which His infinite wisdom devises, 
and having its destiny forever connected with 
His existence. 

"We are the sons of God." This we say of 
our spiriu . But how grandly does the Incarna- 
tion strengthen and sweeten this tie ! And how 
really does the Fatherhood of God afford a pre- 



sumption in favor of the Incarnation ! Are we 
His children really and truly and literally, our 
spirits having been begotten and brought forth 
by Him as our bodies were by our physical fa- 
thers and mothers ? Then He loves the whole 
race. He will give us the enjoyment of His 
whole estate, — why should He not share ours ? 
If I were monarch of an empire, and my chil- 
dren were living in shanties on a little island, for 
a few years, for reasons which I comprehend, 
although they do not, and living there at my 
bidding, should I not visit them, mingle with 
them, sit down at their frugal tables, and sleep 
on their lowly beds ? Could I keep away ? If 
any misfortune overtake your children, are they 
not still your children ? 

We are fathers because God is a father. Are 
not our mothers mothers because God is also 
mother, the Mother Everlasting ? Is not phys- 
ical sex in man the image of spiritual sex in 
God ? What means this record in Genesis 
about the making of the bodies of human be- 
ings? " God created man in His own image; 
in the image of God created He him, male and 
female, created He them." Is not our whole 
constitution a resemblance to that of our dear 
Heavenly Father ? And as we delight to trace 
resemblances in ourselves to our fathers and to 
our children, does not our dear Heavenly Father 
delight to reproduce likenesses to Himself in the 
constitution of His beloved children ? 

Why should He not wear our fleshly body 
about Him ? Why should He not condescend 
to our low estate ? We believe that He has done 
so, and that His being born of a Virgin is not so 
monstrous a thing as man's being born of a 
mollusk would be. 

We believe that He is our Father and the 
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, quite differ- 
ently the Father of Jesus from the Father of us, 
setting aside all human paternity for Him, be- 
cause His was to be the flesh in which God was 
to be manifest, and He was to be the One " of 
whom the whole family in heaven and earth is 
named." Is he not the best father to his boys 
who is more like an elder brother than an older 
governor ? Can we conceive any way in which 
God could more strengthen the paternal tie than 
by also becoming the Brother of our Humanity ? 
He is not a far-off parent, but a near and dear 
Father, — all the nearer since Jesus lived, all the 
dearer since Jesus died, so that the incarnation 
of God in Jesus increases the emphasis of the 
gladness in our shout, our shout which we shall 
ring through all the worlds, "Now, NOW, NOW, 
are we the sons of God !" If we had simp'y 



246 



Sons of God. 



been told so it had been a transcendent revela- 
tion, but now that we have been shown so, it is 
the most surpassing demonstration of the Good- 
ness of God and the most brilliant badge of the 
dignity of man. 

After this assertion of our glorious relation- 
ship, the Apostle asserts our blessed ignorance : 
" It doth not yet appear what we shall be." 

I call this ignorance "blessed" because there 
is in it an intimation of what is unspeakably de- 
sirable, a continuance of our existence, without 
such a revelation of what its consummations 
shall be as would take all spring out of our 
efforts and all freshness out of our progress. 

"We shall be." That settles a glorious fact 
for us. Life may harass us, Death may strike 
us, the Grave may swallow us ; the ages may 
seem to have engulphed us ; out far from the 
view of all who knew us we may be sailing the 
solemn seas of eternity, but " we shall be /" The 
memory of our names may perish out of the 
minds of men. All the fashions of this world may 
change. The earth itself may grow decrepid 
with age, 

" Its cities have no sound nor tread, 
Its ships lie drifting with the dead 
To shores where all are dumb," 

and this old planet die and drop adown the 
tomb-like chasms of the universe, and new-born 
worlds rise, like young giants filled with new 
wine, to run a race of glory in the skies and 
reach their goal of doom. God's grand material 
chronometer of stellar systems may have the 
cogs of its vast wheels break off in the friction 
of its long, long work ; its pendulum — each 
sweep of which has been through cycles — may 
rust at its attachment and drop off, and the old 
clock be stilled ; and men and angels may have 
ceased to measure duration or make record of 
ages ; and all latitude and longitude be lost on 
the shoreless sea of eternity — but we, we who 
are " the sons of God," of that God " who only 
hath immortality," the heritors of that trait in 
our Father's existence, "we shall be." 

Our race is yet in its infancy, whatever theo- 
ries of physical genesis be adopted. Each man 
will be in his infancy when myriads of ages shall 
have passed. Who can tell to what he may not 
grow, seeing that he is a son of God ? To what 
have we not already grown in reality or in ima- 
gination ? The realities of the future are to sur- 
pass the imaginings of to-day. With our basis 
of immortality, with our growing faculties, with 
the experiences of our career on earth, with the 
spaces and instruments and associations and 
helps of eternity, to what may we not attain ? 



We shall not cease to be sons of God, but who 
can tell " what" sons of God may come to be? 

I call this a blessed ignorance. Who would 
climb the mountain-heights if before starting he 
had all of sublime perspective, all of exhilarating 
air, all the sense of success which succeeding 
imparts ? 

Some of you who hear me to-day may have 
achieved what the world considers great for- 
tunes. Reflect : suppose that when you were 
boys you could have known certainly each par- 
ticular success, and the sum-total of all the suc- 
cesses of your lives, and the number of millions 
of dollars you can this day command, would not 
your advance along the road have been a most 
commonplace march, devoid of all the charm 
which comes like a sweet surprise even when 
men have perfect confidence in their plans ? 

If such men as Alexander and Napoleon had 
known in boyhood what they should be, would 
not almost all the pleasure have been taken out 
of their conflicts and their victories ? 

If the men of scholarship and intellectual 
power who have enlarged the domain of human 
knowledge, could have known just what they 
should be when their fame was full, would it 
not have abstracted from the spring and alert- 
ness of their intellectual movements, and reduced 
that world of imagination which surrounded and 
charmed them into a poor, commonplace work- 
shop or laboratory ? 

So in our spiritual history, brethren, it doth 
not yet appear what we shall be, and this igno- 
rance is the Father's kindly method of sur- 
rounding us with a medium through which the 
Future appears so indeterminately beautiful, 
beautiful enough to bear us on until we see the 
realities, plane upon plane ascending, noon upon 
noon bursting, wing upon wing growing, power 
upon power unfolding, each great accomplish- 
ment the herald of a greater achievement, and 
each happy minute the precursor of a happier 
hour. We shall shoot far forward up the line 
of our immortality. Doth it not yet appear? 
No. This is greater and higher and better than 
that : but God's Alps will still be upon God's 
Alps ascending, and from each higher peak we 
shall shout down to our brethren who are below, 
" It doth not yet appear, it doth not yet appear !" 

In our blessed ignorance, however, beloved, 
we have some more blessed knowledge : " We 
know that when He shall appear we shall be like 
Him." 

There can be no greater description of our 
future condition than that. 

It appeals to our intellects. "God-like" is 



Sons of God. 



247 



the highest possible epithet we can bestow upon 
a fellow-mortal. We meditate upon all the 
mind of God, upon all the character of God, 
"glorious in holiness," and then say to our- 
selves, "We shall be like Him!" "Ye shall 
be like gods," was the first seduction to evil. 
The end to be gained was the highest of all 
desirable by man, and so brilliant that man did 
not stop to consider the probable insufficiency 
of the means. If the tempter's promise to Eve 
had been true, she would have done well to heed 
his counsel. 

To be like God is man's highest possible con- 
ception. The glory of any human greatness or 
grandeur lies in the fact that we fancy that some- 
how it resembles the estate of God. So, each 
Christian may fancy himself far up in eternity, 
wise, powerful, good, — a grand, radiant, beautiful 
spirit, — a loving, acting image of the Almighty 
Father. No other representation could so appeal 
to our fancies, no other promise so satisfy our 
intellectual demands. 

But, there is something else in this most 
blessed knowledge : it is the most powerful 
appeal to our affections. He is our Father, the 
best, the dearest friend of our souls. We love 
Him. Our faith in Him is the faith of the heart. 
As we grow older He becomes dearer. Through 
all their lives long the saints never find the Lord 
so precious as at the last. When they come to 
the last, and all earthly loves grow powerless to 
sustain them, their hearts turn up to the Father 
in heaven, and they feel that He is chief among 
all the thousands and altogether lovely. Tell 
them of goodly mansions, built on streets of gold, 
in front of a river of life whose stream reflects 
the branches of the trees the leaves of which do 
heal the nations, the stream that makes glad 
the city of our God ; tell them of thrones and 
crowns and sceptres and harps and robes of 
cekstial whiteness ; — these splendors are all 
outside themselves. But if you would fill the 
dying saint with rapture, tell him that he shall 
resemble his Lord, that all the deformities and 
scars of sin shall fall away, and that he shall be 
transformed and transfigured into a likeness to 
his Lord, and live forever in that stately beauty 
of holiness, and then you antedate his heaven. 
To come into that likeness has been the interest 
of all his painful earthly discipline. 

And, then, here is this climax : " We shall 
see Him, as He is." 

How we long to behold the absent beloved. 
When seas are between us, how we cherish and 
gaze upon the memorial portraits of the dear 
faces of our distant darlings. And when they 



have crossed over that last river, that rolls dark 
between us and the shores of light, how intense 
become our longings to behold once more the 
faces of our children, of our fathers and mothers, 
of our husbands and of our wives. Much of 
heaven, to many minds, is in the reunion of 
friends, but to one who appreciates the blessed- 
ness of being a son of God, the Heavenly Father 
is so unspeakably precious, that, with all his 
other loves, he often cries out, " Whom have I 
in heaven but Thee, and there is none upon 
earth that I desire beside Thee : my heart and 
my flesh fail, but Thou art the strength of my 
heart and my portion forever." His longings 
are for the vision of God. If that were not 
granted, all the heavens would be to him but 
empty pageants. 

Dearly beloved brethren, we are sure of this, 
that in some way, we know not how "we 
shall see Him," — not with the vision of faith 
merely, not as now shining, and sometimes 
darkling, through all this veil of the material 
universe wherewith He wraps Himself, — but in 
open vision, "as He is." "Show me Thy 
glory," cried Moses. " Show me Thy glory," 
cries every saint. O eyes so filled with weep- 
ing, O eyes that have been blind from your 
birth, ye shall " see the King in His beauty and 
the land that is very far off." 

Brethren, the Apostle seems to connect these 
two things: "We shall be like Him, for we 
shall see Him as He is." The very sight of Him 
shall be transfiguring. As Moses in the Mount 
did catch from the glory of God's face a bright- 
ness, which so wrought itself into the very flesh 
of the prophet's countenance that its luminous- 
ness lingered even when he had descended from 
the celestial conference, so we, beholding Him 
with open face, shall be changed from glory 
to glory, into a perpetually increasing likeness 
to our Lord. 

As the dull and opaque planets turning their 
faces to the sun do brighten into stars, so when 
all the patriarchs and prophets and martyrs 
and confessors and other sons of God, ranged 
in adoring ranks, or flying on works of love, or 
pausing on peaks of splendor, or walking the 
New Jerusalem, shall turn their-fond eyes to their 
Lord, they shall glow into a deeper, richer beauty 
of resemblance to His spiritual glory. All the 
more precious to us will be — will it not, breth- 
ren ? — our new immortal loveliness, because it 
comes from His. 

Such, dearly beloved, is the Apostle's state- 
ments of our high relationship and glorious 
destiny. 



Sons of God. 



Shall we use them merely as subjects for fond 
fancy, and suggestions to our imaginations ? He 
did not so employ them, nor must we. We may 
be poets, but we desire to be something more 
than poets, — we should desire to be saints. No 
revelation to us in regard to the future would 
be profitable that did not bear on the culture of 
our characters in the present. We are not yet 
in heaven. We are sons; but sons that have 
not yet attained our majority. We are in the 
flesh. We are in a world of fields and shops and 
stores and studios, — a world that has demands 
upon us, — a world in which much work must be 
done that seems to leave no result, as when we 
sew our garments that so soon wear out, and 
cook our food which is so soon consumed. But 
it is our present work which the Father has set 
us to do, in our minority. Let us not disdain it. 
Let us remember that love shows itself in the 
obedience to small as to large demands. If you 
are a son of God on earth and your father is^ia 
son of God in heaven, you just as much dis- 
charge your filial duties in toiling with the tools 
and trades of earth, as he does his in sweeping 
harp-strings where the angels sing. 

How excellent and practical is the verse with 
which St. John follows our sublime text : "Ev- 
ery man that hath this hope in him purifieth 
himself, even as He is pure." 

If we are hoping, that is, expecting and desir- 
ing, to ' 'be like Him" in heaven, we are trying 
to be like Him on earth. As He is pure, we are 
striving to be pure. If we are not, it is melan- 
choly proof that we have not that hope, and 
that we have no confidence in the statement that 
we are " sons of God." And so we are brought 
back to where our sermon started, that no knowl- 
edge gives men such power to be good as the 
knowledge that they are "sons of God." 

Do you believe that, my brother ? It is a fact, 
whether you believe it or not : but it becomes 
another, a higher, dearer, more powerful fact, 
the moment you do believe. And if you do not 



believe it, it is a dead fact for you. Having a 
Father, you are spiritually an orphan. 

And you can have no realization of the fact 
except through Jesus. When men talk of the 
" fatherhood of God" apart from Jesus, they talk 
of what they do not " know." They may desire 
it : they may guess it : but they cannot know it. 
So true are the words of Jesus, " No man Com- 
eth unto the Father but by ME." " If ye had 
known ME, ye should have known my Father 
also." 

Why should we cast away our rights as sons 
of God ? If we do, we know what will follow : 
we shall become the adopted sons of the devil, 
and then in that great disgrace we shall do things 
which shall lay us open to the terrible allegation 
of Jesus against the Pharisees : "Ye are of your 
father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye 
will do." 

No, dearly beloved, let it not be so. Let us 
come back to our original childship as "sons of 
God." In the loftiness thereof let us live. There 
can be no dignity without the conviction of the 
truth of that. Earth may heap its treasures in 
our laps and set crowns upon our heads, but we 
can never come to any real greatness if we do 
not recognize our relationship to God. 

Knowing that, nothing can depress us. We 
shall walk the world disguised as farmers, mer- 
chants, lawyers, physicians, preachers, mechan- 
ics, students, poor, unknown, unrecognized, 
playing or praying, studying or writing, toiling 
in shops for bread and dying in lonely places, 
but living or dying or dead, walking the ways of 
this world or ascending the lofty places of eter- 
nity, this is our safety, our honor, our glory, our 
happiness, our crown, our estate, our everlasting 
joy, our everlasting claim on all the boundless 
riches of the estate of our Heavenly Father, 
" We are the sons of God." 

" Behold, what manner of love the Father has 
bestowed upon us, that we should be called — 
the sons of God.." 



XL. 

"AND AS JESUS PASSKD BY, HE SAW A MAN WHICH WAS BLIND FROM HIS BIRTH. AND HIS DIS- 
CIPLES ASKED HIM, SAYING, MASTER, WHO DID SIN, THIS MAN OR HIS PARENTS, THAT HE 
WAS BORN BLIND?" JOHN, IX. I, 2. 



This opening of the morning lesson, my breth- 
ren, brings us squarely up to the old problem, 
of the existence of pain in the miiverse of the good 
God. 

From the beginning of sorrow in the world 
this would naturally be a question with all minds 
that thoughtfully contemplated the phenomena 
of life. It connects itself with all the subtleties 
of thought, all the operations of God, and all the 
flow of She stream of human existence. He 
would be a brave man who, even now, after cen- 
turies of observation and investigation, should 
dare to announce himself equal to the solution 
of this problem of the ages. That man is not 
before you to-day. Nevertheless, it is my duty 
to gather from the case in the text and the com- 
ments of our blessed Saviour what lessons may 
be learned for our edification and comfort. 

To begin : First of all, given the terms " God " 
and " good," men would naturally suppose that 
if there be a Supreme Personal Existence who 
created the Universe with its organic and inor- 
ganic creatures, and the forces which play upon 
those creatures, having the sagacity to contrive 
and the power to create these things and those 
forces, and put them on an adjustment, the in- 
tent must have been good, and the result must 
be beneficial. All rational conceptions of God 
assign to Him every conceivable excellency in all 
conceivable perfection. Any denial of either is 
not simply derogatory of His character, but 
absolutely destructive to any reasonable concept 
of the Supreme Creator and Governor of intelli- 
gent, moral, accountable creatures. So we may 
settle that as an immovable and incontrovertible 
proposition. Whatever fancy, thought, or course 
of reasoning collides with that proposition must 
go to pieces. God is good and doeth only good, 
forever and ever. Ainen. 

Now we come down among men and things. 
Whatever beauties and glories there may be in 
the physical universe, whatever excellent facul- 



ties and powers of enjoyment there may be in 
man, we see in all ages, in all conditions, in all 
places, multiplied instances of great privation 
and positive suffering. All society shows, all 
literature reports, all science investigates, all 
social and civil arrangements acknowledge, the 
existence of pain, want, distress among men. 
There is pain of the body, distress of the mind, 
anguish of the soul — a cry, a wail, a shriek, driv- 
ing their discords into all the rhythm of the 
music of the spheres, into all the melodies of the 
sounds of nature, into all the joyousness of 
laughter, and all the bars that are beaten by 
the pulsating feet of the happy dancers of the 
world. 

Pain is as fixed a fact in the history of man as 
love is the immutable essence of God. 

Apart from all verbal revelation of the will of 
God, man could not be long in conducting his 
reasoning to the result of the existence of law, 
that which expresses whatever there is in the uni- 
verse which regulates and moderates the activity 
of forces, or implies the method by which they 
shall work, or arises from the relations which 
things, of necessity, bear toward one another, or 
expressing the invariable order of the workings 
of any energy. And as men push their investi- 
gations into material, mental, and ethical rela- 
tions, into the body, the intellect, the soul of 
man, they reach physical, metaphysical, moral 
laws, and find them quite as invariable and in- 
evitable in one department as in another. They 
are written in every particle of the body, in every 
faculty of the mind, in every power of the soul. 

The very next discovery is this : that any 
attempt to interfere with the operations of these 
laws, whether the attempt be made deliberately 
or thoughtlessly, and for whatever end, good or 
bad, is followed by pain in the person who so 
interferes. In other words, it is discovered that 
every law has its appropriate penalty. Each 
man's experience settles that question so far as 



250 The Old 



he himself is concerned, and to the whole extent 
of his observation upon society it is confirmed as 
it regards other men ; and he naturally concludes 
the same as regards all men. 

Another discovery is soon made, namely, that 
the race being propagated by repeated genera- 
tions rather than by repeated creations, the 
physical characteristics, the intellectual traits, 
and the moral qualities and proclivities, descend 
from sire to son. Upon seeing a man's children, 
we instinctively begin to trace the resemblance 
to the father and mother, and sometimes discover 
a remarkable likeness to some grandparent or 
perhaps great-grandparent. That was the first 
series of observation in this line. Subsequent 
comparisons of phenomena established what 
is now generally accepted as the law of the 
transmission of mental and moral quali- 
ties. 

Whatever fuller light modern science^ may 
have shed upon these facts and these laws, they 
are not the product of merely modern research. 
Traces of these are almost everywhere in the 
stream of recorded human thought, as far up to 
the fountain-head as the literature of the world 
enables us to ascend. It is probably impossible 
now to determine when men first began to put 
in shapely manner before their minds the con- 
ceptions we have been uttering in words. But 
this much is certain, that very early in the his- 
tory of human society we discover that the 
doctrine of retribution was not merely held 
loosely as hypothesis, but was imbedded in the 
human mind, and springing up in all forms of 
human literature and art. 

The heathen classic literature is full of it. The 
students of the old Greek dramatists can never 
forget with what power it comes out in the writ- 
ings of ^Eschylus, the father of classic tragedy ; 
how he shakes his readers with the grand hor- 
rors of the Prometheus, the Agamemnon, the 
Eumenides ; how in them and his other tragedies 
which have survived we are thrilled by the 
perpetual reproduction of ancestral guilt, the 
punishment of successive generations of sinners 
who are pressed into the commission of atroci- 
ties by the doom which lay mountain-heavy on 
their race. Nor will they fail to remember how 
the greatest of Greek dramatic authors, in his 
wonderful CEdipus, seems to attempt an imita- 
tion of the intricacies of Divine Providence, and 
the inevitability of the blow of retribution from 
the opening of the plot to the tremendous catas- 
trophe ; nor with what splendid diction and 
terrible beauty the same doctrines are set forth 
by Euripides in his wonderful Phcsdra and over- 



Qwestion. 



whelming Medea; and, indeed, the wi jle 
ancient classic tragedy surges with the heaving 
billows of sinful passion under the beating tem- 
pests of tremendous retribution. 

The ancient idea of penalty was personified. 
Nemesis, daughter of Darkness and kinswoman 
of Shame, was the agent of the gods in the pun- 
ishment of the violation of law, and was the 
special avenger of family crimes. With the 
scent, the swiftness, and the certainty of a sleuth- 
hound, she followed guilt through all the wind- 
ings of society and all the doublings of blood, 
until she smote it with the scourge that infu- 
riated or the sword that destroyed. It is reported 
that the skill of even Phidias was employed to 
embody in marble the popular conception of 
this personation of penalty. 

This same idea of the inevitable following of 
pain upon transgression, at whatever intervals 
and through whatever prosperities, lay dark and 
heavy on the Hebrew mind. In that simplest, 
grandest, and most solemn of all tragedies, the 
book Job, we see a very powerful representa- 
tion of this. A man serving God with such 
consecration and such constancy that even the 
Almighty spoke of him as His perfect servant, 
suddenly topples from the pinnacle of human 
prosperity to the dunghill of the lowest debase- 
ment ; from surroundings of comfort, which 
made him seem like a secure god, into priva- 
tions and pains which ranked him among the 
most pitiful of the feeble. When his friend? 
drew near to condole with him, they did not 
know him. They beheld a blackened ruin lay 
where there had stood a palace of delights. The 
sight was so appalling that Eliphaz the Teman- 
ite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the 
Naamathite, lifted up their voices and wept, and 
rent their mantles and crowned themselves with 
dust, and sat down with the sufferer seven days 
and seven nights, and never a man of them 
essayed to break with syllables the awful silence 
of that transcendent grief. And when they did, 
when they had taken a week to contemplate the 
situation and study the case of Job, these three 
great men, whom Job had thought worthy to be 
his friends, embodied their philosophy in such 
words as these : 

Eliphaz said, " Who ever perished being in- 
nocent ? or, where were the righteous cut off? 
Even as I have seen, they that plough iniquity 
and sow wickedness reap the same" 

Bildad said, "Can the rush grow up without 
mire ? Can the flax grow without water ? Whilst 
it is yet in its greenness and not cut down, it 
withereth before any other herb. So are the 



The Old 



paths of all that forget God ; and the hypocrite's 
hope shall perish" 

Zophar boldly said, ""Know that God exact- 
eth of thee less than thine iniquity deserveth." 

And amidst all this intimation or assertion of 
secret sin, Job was without fault. But it was im- 
practicable for these men to conceive it possible 
that there could be so much suffering and no 
sin. We know that Job was in the midst of pro- 
digious pains, which were in no way a punish- 
ment, either for his own sins or the sins of any 
other. 

So when we come down to the days of our 
Lord Jesus and the passage of our text, we find 
the Saviour of the world confronted with a case 
of special privation, and His disciples plumply 
put the direct question to Him, " Who did sin, 
this man or his parents, that he was born blind ?" 
Here is a sad case, a man who had never beheld 
God's great expanse of the heavens or fruitful 
field of the earth — a man who had never seen 
the love-light in the eye of mother or wife or 
child — a man to whom the angel-rays of holy 
light had never come flooding in from all the 
forms of nature and of art, full of reports of 
beauty. It was a dire privation. It never oc- 
curred to the disciples to ask the previous ques- 
tion, " Why came he thus ?" They never ques- 
tion their prejudices and their old ideas which 
they had received from their fathers. They pre- 
sumed sin. Here is suffering, where is the sin ? 
Suffering has only one parent, Sin. All they 
seemed curious to know was, Who was the sin- 
ner ? It broke upon them like a new day on what 
they supposed the noon of their intelligence, 
when the Master said, Neither hath this ma7t 
sinned nor his parents. It was an utterance 
which smote the mouth of Poetry with the hand 
of Silence, and emptied the garnered treasures 
of Philosophy into the sea. 

The erroneous opinion that all sufferers are 
sinners, may arise in two ways : 

I. From an illogical conversion of the proposi- 
tion, All sinners must at some time be sufferers. 
That proposition is true. Every experiment you 
and I have made in violating any of the physical, 
mental, or moral laws which God has established 
for the good government of His universe has 
brought us pain on the instant or after lapse of 
time. So far as we have known the private his- 
tory of our acquaintances, the same is true of 
them ; and, so far as the inward life and outward 
condition of men in all ages have been revealed 
to us, the same holds good. But it does not fol- 
low that therefore all sufferers are sinners. The 
pulpit is not the place in which to give lessons 



Question. 251 



in elementary technical logic, to teach you how 
unfair and unwise is this reasoning. In common 
affairs, for instance, the boys of this congrega- 
tion know, although they may not be able to 
show the logical reason, that it is not fair to say, 
because all small-pox patients are diseased, that 
therefore all sick people have the small-pox ; nor 
to say, because all wives are women, that there- 
fore every woman is a wife ; nor because every 
President is a native citizen, that therefore every 
native citizen is a President. Just as illogical is 
it to say, because every sinner is a sufferer, that 
therefore every sufferer is a sinner. Or, 

2. The error may arise from the assumption 
that every case of individual suffering comes 
from the individual's own sin. Let it be granted 
that there would be no pain in all the world if 
there were no sin, it still does not follow that 
every pain of every man is the exact retributive 
penalty of his own transgression, until you estab- 
lish the proposition that no man holds any such 
relation to any other man as to be touched by 
that man's deed — a proposition which is contrary 
to the known truth, as has already been shown 
and will still further be illustrated. 

Now let us go to Holy Scripture again. In 
Exodus, xx. 5, 6, is a passage which has shot 
terror through many a soul : " I the Lord thy 
God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of 
the fathers upon the children to the third and 
fourth generation" — if you pause there, you do 
great injustice to the Great Father, by not add- 
ing — " of them that hate ME, and showing mercy 
unto thousands [of generations] of them that love 
me and keep my commandments." If the ob- 
servations of science, the statements of philoso- 
phy, and the representations of poetry, are con- 
firmed by God's tremendous Sinai utterances, 
the world is never to forget that the reach of 
mercy is as much greater than the stretch of 
wrath as indefinite thousands are greater than 
three or four. With that passage in Exodus, 
study the following : 

Deut. xxv. 1 6 : " The fathers shall not be put 
to death for the children, neither shall the chil- 
dren be put to death for the sins of the fathers. 
Every man shall be put to death for his own 
sin." 

Ezekiel, xviii. 20: ''The soul that sinneth, h 
shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity 
of the father, neither shall the father bear the 
iniquity of the son." 

Without the blessed illuminations of the Gos- 
pel, I think we may safely gather from these pas- 
sages that children may be involved in the con- 
sequences of the sins of parents, and parents in 



252 The Old 



those of the sins of the children, without in either 
case the suffering being the result of the indi- 
vidual's sin, and certainly without involving 
spiritual loss in this world or in the world to 
come. 

The topic is broad and my time is brief. So 
that what remains to be said must be put com- 
pactly. 

I. Consider this : Given, a good God having 
laws which are not to keep a man in from good, 
but to keep evil out from man, it would in ad- 
vance be supposed that He would somehow 
arrange that warnings should be given to keep 
men from treading upon springs which would 
let fly upon them an arm of power worked on a 
leverage that gives incalculable force to its blow. 
How could that be done without the ministry of 
Pain ? Can you conceive Pleasure without the 
possible existence of Pain ? Could there be any 
Truth without at least the possible existence 
of Error? Could there be pleasure in seeking 
Truth if there were no pain in the embraces of 
Error ? But some man will ask, why the exist- 
ence of that powerful avenging arm ? In reply, 
Can you conceive a law without at least some 
reward for its observance ? If there be a reward, 
the very failure to obtain it is a privation, to 
say the least, and makes a marked distinction 
between them that obey and them that do not. 

Pain is not sent by God as a curse. Pain is 
God's sentryman standing on the track, waving 
his red flag, and warning you against a collision 
which must be destructive to you. Take it in 
physics. You sit by your grate with your un- 
booted feet upon a stool, and absorbed in the 
book of philosophy or adventure. Your feet 
slide nearer to the fire. Now, in the nature of 
things, fire must, FOR man's good, as in cook- 
ing, produce such changes upon flesh as when 
wrought on the feet of a man living must cripple 
him for life. Suppose you had no notice of 
what was going on at your feet ! you would read 
your book by the hour and then find yourself 
mutilated for life. But what does Pain do ? God 
has constructed a mysterious telegraph from your 
foot to your brain. Pain stands with his hands on 
the instrument in the feet, unwinkingly watches 
while you read or sleep, allows you perfect quiet 
and freedom until you glide insensibly up to 
that line which separates Danger from Damage, 
and just at that instant, not a moment sooner 
or later, Pain plays on the knobs of the instru- 
ment, and a report in your brain screams 
t( Fire ! Fire ! Fire !" and you draw back to 
your salvation. 

If time allowed,, in a thousand ways might 



Question. 



this be illustrated : but this you may settle, that 
next after your pleasures you should daily thank 
God for your pains. 

2. Suffering often comes from the far-off sins 
of others. 

Perhaps God might have made men in perfect 
individual isolation. But as He has not, it is 
reasonable to suppose that the best constitution 
for men is the inter-dependence and inwoven 
human sympathies which tie each man to all 
his fellows, to some nearly and tightly, and to 
the others more or less remotely. In infinite 
wisdom and goodness God chose to make matter 
and to make spirit. He created things. He 
created forces. He begat the soul of man. In 
one particular He begat man in His own image, 
namely, in the total, absolute, utter, autocratic 
freedom of the will. Every man's will is as free 
as the will of God. There is no use in an effort 
to prove the freedom of the will; it is a matter 
of consciousness to every man. Every man 
knows that he can will to do against the highest, 
the best, and the strongest motive through 
sheerest whim, fantasy, and caprice. But ma- 
terial things God, for man's good obviously, 
has bound up in a system of laws which may 
be known by men, and which holds all matter 
in an adamantine chain, and draws it on its 
orbit with an exactitude the most precise, so 
precise as to be calculable by man backward 
and forward through thousands of years. The 
wild play of one mad human will among these 
physical creatures of God brings suffering to the 
individual. The tie which binds him to parent, 
or wife, or child, communicates to them some 
results of his misdoing, so that the innocent in 
this world must often suffer with the guilty. 
That unspotted bud of girlhood on the eve of 
the most beautiful outbloom into a transcendent 
womanhood, is blightened and blackened by the 
frost which the notorious crime of her father or 
mother has sent through all the domestic garden. 
It may seem hard, but it is better so than 
otherwise, unless you believe it had been better 
for God to have set up His throne in a universe 
of dead worlds, in which no spirit flamed, no 
mind worked, no heart glowed, and no virtue 
could possibly exist. That might be your pref- 
erence, it was not His. His choice must be the 
very best of all conceivable possibilities. 

This, dear brethren, I think, ought to silence 
the querulousness of those who say, But cannot 
God make it now otherwise ? Is He not omnipo- 
tent? Can He not do everything? No! He 
cannot do everything, although He is omnipo- 
tent. He cannot do inconsistent, absurd things. 



The Old 



He can do all with power that can be done with 
power, but He cannot make real the dreams of 
all the idiots. When I was a little boy just read- 
ing Caesar's War in Gaul, a foolish young skep- 
tical clerk said to me. " Do you believe God can 
do everything?" "Yes, I do," was my hearty 
orthodox reply. " Do you believe that Caesar 
was once alive?" " Yes, I do." "Do you be- 
lieve that now God could make Ccesar never to 
have been V And my poor little head was 
addled all night by that foolish question. It did 
not occur to me to reply that Omnipotence 
means doing with power all that can be done 
with power. If making to not have been a being 
who has been, is a case within the operation of 
power, then God can do it ; if not, then the 
question is senseless. 

All that you and I need do, beloved, is to be- 
lieve forever that the Father of heaven and earth 
will do right, will do good, will do best. 

3. Here is Christ's ray of light on one case 
which may be applicable to millions : " Neither 
hath this man sinned nor his parents; but that 
the works of God should be made manifest in 
him." Not that the man had never committed 
sin of any kind, not that his parents were fault- 
less, but that his blindness was not a punish- 
ment, was not the result of sin. This was the 
grand revelation to the world that suffering may 
exist without sin, and as part of the working of a 
beneficent law whose sweep describes a circum- 
ference too large for human vision, but inclosing 
a vast field of God's benign operations; of this 
circle, the segment, if visible to us, is too small, 
too fine a point, for us to find the centre, meas- 
ure the radius, and calculate the area, with all 
the aids of all the geometry known to man. 
Christ says that a man may suffer for God's 
sake ; and by the cure of the blind man, and 
the results of that cure, He demonstrated this 
blessed fact. 

And now let me beg you, Christian people, to 
abandon the heathenish notion that all misfor- 
tune, pain, and suffering comes to a man be- 
cause of his sin. It will lead you into incal- 
culable mischiefs of reasoning, of feeling, and 
of practice. 

(1.) As touching your neighbors, it will make 
you uncharitable. Every sufferer will seem to 
you smitten and afflicted of God. Every Apostle 
to whose hand an adder out of the fagots shall 
cling will seem to you an impostor — every Job 
on his dunghill a secret hypocrite. When fire, 
failure, pestilence visit your neighbor, you will 
say, "The judgments of God have found him 
out." You will be hardened toward all them to 



Question. 253 



whom the heart of God turns most tenderly. 
Earth will darken. You will become skeptical 
and unreasonable, mad and intolerant. You 
will not let Christianity do for you what its best 
office is for the world — make you send your rain 
and your sunshine on just and unjust, and thus 
be like your Father in heaven. Oh ! brethren, 
the dear suffering Christ has made all suffering 
a solemn and a holy thing. The deforme'd, the 
hideous, the helpless — every crippled man and 
little hunchback child, carries written on all his 
unloveliness, " That the works of God should be 
manifest in him /" Not in the healthy, the 
wealthy, the beautiful, the attractive, so much 
as in him : not in the captivating, dancing 
daughter of Herodias, as in the man that was 
blind from his birth. 

(2.) It will fling you into despair when your 
own great troubles come. You will say, " He 
cannot love me. I am not His child; His wrath 
is on me." Are you shut up to some great, life- 
long, irremediable affliction ? Has there fallen 
upon you a storm that has swept your domestic 
sanctuary, a West India hurricane that hath 
lifted your house up and dashed it down into 
fragments, and left you clinging to the very trees 
that are twisted by the fury of the whirlwind ? 
Be still. Trust God. He is more important 
than you. His glory is more important than 
your present ease. He will glorify Himself in 
you. Then He will glorify you in Himself. 

Before we part, let us undergird our faith with 
another glance at the two notable cases in the 
Old Gospel and in the New: 

" Ye have heard the patience of Job and have 
seen the end of the Lord." The patience of Job 
was a marvel of endurance, and the " end of 
the Lord" was a magnificence of mercy. Job 
had the consciousness of being right in his heart 
and life with God, and yet the storms of calamity 
broke upon him until a deluge came, and every 
mountain-top of reason was submerged, and he 
floated solitarily in the ark of his trust. He had 
no earthly consolation. His children were gone. 
His wife was faithless. His three chief friends 
were miserable comforters. Eiiphaz insinuated 
that, with all his apparent humility, he was in 
secret a sinner. Bildad plainly intimated that 
he was a hypocrite, and Zophar flatly called him 
a liar. And remember that you know what he 
did not know, or it would have been strength to 
him, namely, that God was building him up on 
the cliffs of time a light-house to over-splendor 
the dark sea in which thousands of mariners 
should be struggling in the waves of midnight. 

It was absolutely necessary that men should 



The Old 



Question. 



be convinced of the superiority of trust to logic, 
of faith to reason. Reason is great, but Trust is 
greater. No matter what a man's powers or 
culture may be, seasons will come when he can- 
not reason, because he has no knowledge, no 
facts, no known propositions, nothing to start 
from — all hidden ; or all strength to perceive, 
compare, reason, may be lost. But he lives. 
He suffers. What must he do in his anguish ? 
Trust, as Job did, who cried out, " Though He 
slay me, yet will I trust in Him ! " As though 
he had said — Here, God, take my hand ! I am 
blind. Smit by the lightning of this storm and 
deafened by its thunder, and dazed by its whirl, 
I stagger and flounder in abysmal waters that 
roll and toss me. Take me, God. I trust Thee. 
Pull me out to any of Thy dark recesses Thou 
hast in Thine eternal works, and slay me. Sink 
me down this abysm, and crush me with weight 
of waters. I know not. All dark ! I tiling 
not. I am in a rage of anguish. But I trust — 
trust Thee ! 

For a man in such a case to reason would be 
damnation. He trusted : it was salvation. 

Long after the superb martyrdom of Job, the 
young Teacher of Judea, that miracle of moral 
beauty, was instructing the obstinate world. 
Men stoned Him. He was going from a mob 
that sought to kill Him, when he came upon 
this blind man of our text. He saw him. He 
stopped to study him, to look into those sight- 
less balls that rolled longingly toward lights and 
sights they never enjoyed. It was the Divine 
Benignity standing once more face to face with 
Human Suffering. Perhaps the disciples saw 
their Master's look of interest, and drew near. 
The blind man must have heard the rustling of 
the crowd, and with a blind man's quickness 
knew there were others present. He heard one 
call him " Master." He had heard of Jesus, and 
all his wonderful works and words. And the 
disciples (without knowledge of the doctrines of 
metempsychosis and the pre-existence), simply, 
— as simple men have always been puzzled with 
the fact of suffering in God's good world, and 
have asked as many foolish questions as wiser 
men have said foolish things, — simply they 



asked the question which involved all their pre- 
judices and presumptions, " Master, who did 
sin, this man or his parents, that he was born 
blind ?" 

Then the blind man knew who it was, and 
his heart leaped up into his throat. Over and oft 
as he sat by the wayside, and his head and eyes 
were rolling, he was questioning the Past, the 
Present, Time, Eternity, the Infinite, as to his 
condition, " Why am I blind?" And perhaps it 
took the form in which he heard it now. " Has 
some ancestral hand of blood stretched itself 
over the generations and shut up mine eyes ? 
Did God, foreseeing that I should sin, in advance 
seal my punishment with darkness?" And 
Fate, Foreknowledge, God, Light, Darkness, 
Life, Death, all ran round in his weak head in 
a bewildering dance of thoughts and fancy. 
" Now my question is to be answered." Oh! 
yes, blind brother, your question is to be an- 
swered, and mine, and that of millions of aching 
hearts. You are not the only one interested, 
but all humanity stands a-tiptoe to hear what 
He who came out from God shall say upon this 
subject. His lips part, His brows rise, his per- 
son expands. Out of the Christ is to come the 
deciding word. And He said, ''Neither hath 
this man sinned, nor his parents ; but that the 
works of God might be made manifest in him." 

"What? Jesus, can a man suffer for God's 
sake ?" 

"Yes." 

" And be no sinner?" 

" Yes. Pain is not always penal." 

And that the heart of the world might trust 
that grand and blessed revelation forever, He, 
the spotless, the undefiled, the separate from 
sinners, ascended the cross, and suffered and 
died. And now we — all we can do, is to fall 
down in rapture and worship before Him, and 
cry, " Clouds and darkness are round about 
Thee, but judgment and justice are the habita- 
tion of Thy throne. Blessed be Jehovah-God, 
the God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous 
things ! And blessed be His glorious name for- 
ever ! And let the whole earth be filled with 
His glory ! Amen and Amen " 



XLI. 

"what fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for ths 
end of those things is death." romans, vi. 2 1. 



Men recognize the distinction between right 
and wrong intuitively. 

That is to say, they do not convince them- 
selves by their own reasonings, nor are they con- 
vinced by the reasonings of others, that there is 
such a distinction. If a man deny it, you need 
not attempt to persuade or convince him. He 
is simply insane. — as insane as a man would be 
who should deny that a part is less than a whole. 
You would not undertake to prove such a pro- 
position, would you ? If, just as soon as a man 
knew what the words part, and whole, and less 
mean, he should not see that a part of anything 
is less than that whole thing, he would be so 
defective intellectually as not to be open to con- 
viction by any process of reasoning. 

Just so it seems to be here. 

So far as we know, every human being believes, 
without going to the trouble of examining, that 
there is such a quality in actions as right ; and 
that, in some actions, there is an opposite quality, 
which, in our language, we call wrong ; and 
that there is a distinction between them, so that 
the right can never be wrong, and the wrong 
can never be right. 

So, we never have to prove there is a right, 
and never have to prove that there is a wrong. 
The questions which we debate have regard to 
particular actions, whether they be right or 
wrong. In every litigation it is admitted that 
any particular act cannot be, at the same time, 
both right and wrong, and that it certainly is 
one or the other : the question is, which ? 

It is generally conceded that the same act may 
be right under some circumstances and wrong 
under others. Perhaps it would be difficult to 
conceive of any act of which this is not true. 
Giving or taking, action or rest, speech or 
silence, is right or wrong, according to the time, 
the place, the relation in which the actor or 
speaker stands. And yet no one probably has 
ever seriously claimed that the right or the 
wrong was in the circumstances themselves. Do 



we not all feel that behind the act itself, and be- 
yond the circumstances, there is something else ? 
Do we not always refer to that something else in 
our discussion of questions of morals ? 

What is that something else ? It is a sup- 
posed paramount rule of human action, some- 
thing supreme, something untouched by human 
circumstances. We feel that it is possible to 
make our human actions conformable to that 
rule ; that when we do so our actions are right ; 
and when we fail to do so our actions are 
wrong. 

The assumption that such a rule exists is a 
presumption of the existence of a personal, 
autocratic, supreme legislator. Otherwise, 
there can be no reasonable idea of right and 
wrong. No God, no wrong ! No God, no 
right ! If matter be eternal, and the mill grinds 
on, we can soon learn that it is more agreeable 
for us to do some things than to do others ; but 
we cannot say that it is "right," and we cannot 
say that the opposite course would be "wrong." 
What we call " the ethical idea" is a mere 
fancy, if there be no personal God. Atheism 
and Pantheism are flat denials of the intuition 
of men, for men intuitively perceive and believe 
that there is such a thing as right, and that, 
therefore, there is such a Being as the Supreme 
God. The human being does right when his 
will accords with the will of the divine Being, 
whose acknowledged supremacy makes His will 
and not man's will, the standard. 

Let us now strive to go back in thought to 
before the beginning. 

If He be the Eternal God, we shall find Him in 
all His fullness. Then comes the beginning of 
things that are not Himself. They must come 
of themselves or of Him. They cannot come 
of themselves, because they cannot be and not 
be at the same time. Whatever is must be 
Eternal or created. If " things" have been 
created, they must have been created by that 
Eternal God. 



Characteristics of a Sinful Life. 



Why did he create them ? He was alone, un- 
compelled, self-sufficient. And yet He created 
the worlds, and all that in them is, matter and 
force, and the action of force on matter, and the 
reaction of matter on force. This must have 
been because it was impossible to have matter 
without force or force without matter ; or else, 
because He simply chose to create both. Both 
oeing created, the action and reaction of which 
we have spoken are a necessity which exists the 
moment that matter and force are created ; or 
else they were imposed in matter and force by 
the Creator, voluntarily. He must have known 
that they would coexist with matter and force, 
and, with this knowledge, proceeded to create, 
or, after creation, endued matter and force with 
action and reaction : and that would be the 
enactment of a law, as human minds understand 
law. 

And, this being done, there are three suppOt 
sitions open to us. God did all this, made all 
this marvellous universe, through caprice, or 
maliciousness, or lovingness. 

Caprice is excluded by every reasonable con- 
ception of an infinitely perfect God: and if it 
were not, it would be refuted by those innumera- 
ble indications of exactitude everywhere displayed 
in all the greatest and smallest things and move- 
ments of which we are able to inform ourselves, 
— an exactitude which entitles the whole system 
to the name of the Celestial Mechanism. No 
capricious Being of infinite powers would have 
constructed a vast physical world in which no 
force can act on matter capriciously, no matter 
react capriciously on force. No man of science, 
and no thoughtful observer, can believe that the 
Universe is the product of a divine whim. 

We are left to the alternative of maliciousness 
or goodness. 

Let us reflect, dear brethren, that we are so 
constituted that we condemn maliciousness in 
any human being, and praise goodness. We 
should do the same in God. If He had not told 
us that we are His children, we should know 
that we are His creatures. That intellectual 
distinction between malice and lovingness, and 
that instinctive and universal approbation of the 
latter and condemnation of the former, we have 
by creation, God having voluntarily inwrought 
it in us, or as an inherited trait from our Divine 
Father. In either case, it is in us, and it came 
from God. 

If God created the universe out of malicious- 
ness, it is unaccountable that He should have 
made us to rise up instinctively against the mo- 
tive which prompted our Creator, or our Father, 



to such broad and perpetuated expression of 
Himself as this universe is. We cannot compre- 
hend how a father can beget such children as he 
knows must hate him in virtue of their being 
his children. And the perplexity is all the 
greater when we hear Him talking to us of His 
lovingness in ten thousand tones, and see the 
banners of a loving nature waving from myriads 
of spots of His creation. 

If we had -not the revelation of the Gospel, we 
should be led, by correct reasoning, to the con- 
clusion that the universe was created because 
God's essential love, seeking to express itself to 
the silence of eternity, burst forth into the forces, 
and flowed forth into the suns, and ran out in 
the rhythmic dances of law through space, so 
that "in the beginning God created the hea- 
ven and the earth." It may be considered as 
settled, that every law which necessarily comes 
into authority from the very act of creation, or 
is superimposed by the legislative wisdom and 
royal authority of God, is for the good of the 
whole mass of humanity in general, and of each 
individual child of God in particular. 

It is all for our good. Every physical, intel- 
lectual, and spiritual law is for our good, and no 
harm comes of it except as we pervert our liberty 
by throwing ourselves against the good, and 
dashing ourselves upon what should be the foun- 
dation of the palace of our immortal happiness. 

That self-destruction is sin. "Sin is the 
transgression of the law." "The law is your 
life." The law never interferes with us painfully 
until we interfere with the law wrongfully. The 
law secures us, protects us, aids us, guides us, 
crowns us. It were impossible to live without 
the law. 

I have gone over this line of remark, dear 
brethren, that we may learn to disabuse ourselves 
of prejudice against the law. That is the trouble 
with many minds. There is an absurd idea 
that if there were no law we could be immeasur- 
ably happy. Quite the reverse is true. If there 
were no law there would be no pleasure of any 
kind. There are pleasures in sin. All men 
know that, and the Holy Scriptures acknowledge 
it. The pleasure comes from taking advantage 
of the regular operation of some physical and 
intellectual law of the universe, while the sin is 
in violation of some law of relationship. And 
so the Holy Scriptures are true in describing 
the pleasures of sin as being " but for a season." 
The pleasure comes from the law of the things 
which are seen, which are temporary ; the pain 
comes from the violation of the law of the things 
which are unseen and eternal. 



Characteristics 



of a Sinful Life. 



It is of the sins which are violations of the 
law of the higher plane of relationship, that the 
Apostle is speaking in this chapter. It is to the 
characteristics of a sinful life, as he indicates 
them, that I shall call your attention in the re- 
mainder of this discourse. 

I. The first characteristic is ITS BARREN- 
NESS. 

" What fruit had ye?" 

"Fruit" points to enjoyment and increase. 
Now, take any life of self-seeking, — the life of a 
man who does nothing because it pleases the 
will of the Heavenly Father,— a man who only 
considers what will be pleasing to himself indi- 
vidually. Can such a man have real enjoyment 
of the exciting pleasures of sin ? But, more par- 
ticularly, can he have increase ? A pleasure that 
wastes is a painful pleasure. The man has an 
inward consciousness that he is paying too much 
for it. In all our business operations we look 
for fruit. A man is not willing to invest either 
labor or capital, and certainly not both, in what 
he is sure will yield him no fruit. If he can 
make from it a mere support, he has enjoyment 
in seeing his family fed and clothed, and in 
securing his own livelihood. But most men 
desire something beyond that : they desire 
increase. There must be more than at the 
beginning, otherwise, after years of labor, the 
farmer, the merchant, the student, the politician, 
begins to ask himself, "What fruit had I?" 
If he have added nothing to his domain, to his 
capital, or to his power, it is a disappointment 
and a chagrin. Let the plain principle be ap- 
plied to a life of sinfulness: what "fruit" does 
the sinner have ? 

I. Where is the increase of his physical 
power ? 

In the beginning of life this is the side on 
which manhood develops, the growth of a fine 
physique being a matter of great importance in 
our earliest years. There may have been said 
and done things which bring "muscular Chris- 
tianity" into contempt, but when the Holy 
Scriptures speak of your body as "a temple of 
the Holy Ghost," it really does bring that body 
into a high value. It lifts it above being the 
implement of a gymnast, the tool of a mechanic, 
or the arm of a gladiator ; and it sanctifies it to 
the best uses. 

To fit the body for the best ends, to make it a 
beautiful and useful vehicle of the soul, and not 
a load on the winged spirit, to make it stronger 
and stronger to the maximum of mature man- 
hood, and then fairer and fairer to the close of 
old age, when the spirit has no further use for 



flesh, this is a work worth a wise man's time 
and thought. Did a life of sin ever do this work, 
or any part of it, in any manner ? On the con- 
trary, do we not know that when men are regard- 
less of the claims of the relationship which they 
sustain to the Father in heaven and their other 
kin, the passions influence the appetites, and the 
appetites use the body recklessly for their 
present mad enjoyment? That is the reason 
why you see so many old young men, with soft- 
ened muscles, or bloated faces, or blear eyes, 
standing about the doors of our hotels, loafing 
about the offices in the vicinity of the City Hall, 
mere parasites of the Prodigal Son. 

Have you ever studied Du Bufe's face of the 
chief figure in his great painting of the Prodigal 
Son ? A young man of admirable physical pro- 
portions has drunk every goblet of sensual 
pleasure. Look at his face. There is the 
"fruit" ripening. It is the tell-tale dial-plate 
reporting the wrong-going of the works inside. 
In the left-hand compartment, down among the 
hogs, nervous and wretchedly thin, he has the 
physical fruits of sinning. 

Are you making yourselves admirable men 
by late hours in crowded theatres, and the later 
debauch after? You may have a powerful 
bodily constitution, but you know how bittei 
and ashy are the Dead Sea fruits of the next 
morning, — how, after the bath and the brushing 
and the soda-water you are still tremulous. 

There is in this city a man so eaten by disease 
that his frightful face, whenever I have met him, 
has reminded me of Moore's hideous "Prophet 
of Khorassan," and given me a shudder. I have 
met him peddling about in a small business. I 
have been told that he was once a largely-pros- 
perous merchant, and this corruption and dis- 
tortion of his body is the "fruit" he has of 
those things of which he is now ashamed. In 
the lowest department of our nature, in our very 
bodies, which perish, we perceive the barrenness 
of sin. 

2. The barrenness of a sinful life is seen 
also in its failure to give increase of intellectual 
power. 

The development of the mind is dependent 
upon its conversation with truth. Truth is its 
soil, its air, its sunshine, its food. In the 
truth it must be disciplined. Discipline re- 
quires resolute will. The will can endure no 
laxative. It needs tonics. Sin relaxes. Trans- 
gressions of the law, in any department, send 
weakness into all. The man who violates physi- 
cal or ethical law is not likely to be a scrupulous 
observer of intellectual laws* 



258 



Characteristics of a Sinful Life. 



A man who wastes his bodily strength will 
scarcely preserve his mental faculties. If he 
sought to do so, he could not. Every experi- 
ment made in that department goes to prove 
how rapidly sins against the body interfere with 
the progress of the intellect. When one looks 
into the history of professional life, and sees how 
sober, discreet, and honest lawyers and physi- 
cians outlive, as they outwork, more brilliant but 
intemperate practitioners, one sees how the sins 
of the body tell on the mind. 

It is so on the other side. Irregular passions 
that create transgressions of God's spiritual laws 
shed a blight on the intellect. The fumes of 
hot lusts and burning passions becloud the 
mind. Then what intellectual fruit is there ? 
Is cunning a mental fruit to count among our 
valuable assets? If not, please bear in mind 
that the acuteness of the intellects of those who 
continue in a life of sin invariably goes down 
into the sharpness of cunning, or expends itself 
in the phosphorescence of moral putridity. The 
intellect is best developed when all the other 
parts of the man, physical and spiritual, are in 
healthy growth, and the equipoise of the consti- 
tution is maintained. 

3. And this barrenness is seen not only in the 
total suspension of spiritual growth, but in the 
rapid decay of spiritual power. 

All men recognize the correctness of the dis- 
tinction between intellectual force and spiritual 
power. As there are some men who are physic- 
al pigmies but intellectual giants, so there are 
some men who are babes in intellect but mighty 
men in spirit. Their spiritual force is so great 
that trained philosophers feel how superior to 
themselves are these men of simple minds and 
powerful souls. 

Take such a case as that of Harlan Page. 
How many hundreds of men he met constantly 
who were his superiors in mind and intellectual 
training, but who lived and gained no fruit, who 
died and left no fruit, while his was a life of 
constantly-increasing spiritual power and fruitful- 
ness. 

Has any one of us ever discovered that he 
grew in spiritual magnetism while living in the 
known violation of any law ? Has he been able 
to influence other men for their spiritual profit ? 
How often we mistake animal spirits and intel- 
lectual vigor for soul-strength ! How generally 
we fail to perceive that the first injury which sin 
does is to our spirits, and that then the intellect- 
ual, and that afterward the bodily, hurt comes ; 
or, at least, how generally we first notice the 
physical hurt of sin, and then, perhaps, this 



sends us back to learn that the mind and the 
spirit have been impaired. 

It is a terrible thing to be decreasing in soul 
while still the body and the intellect show little 
signs of hurt ! It is the spirit that animates 
both mind and body, and when that is shrink- 
ing, dwindling, dying out in a man, it is a fright- 
ful thing, a premonition of total destruction. ' It 
is as if the heat were decreasing in a world, 
while all its mountains towered, and its seas 
tossed, and itself rolled round in its orbit. It 
would be a dying world. Streams would stiffen 
until the ocean became solid. Plant by plant 
would disappear. Animal by animal would die, 
until the last man sat down on some bleak pro- 
montory, starving, shivering, gazing with frigid, 
glassy eyes through the ghastly arctic atmos- 
phere, at spectres whose heads were glaciers 
and whose ribs were ice, until his life escaped in 
a breath that froze on his stark lips, as it expired. 
A life of sin does just that for a man. 

What fruit ? Alas ! no fruit ! but, instead, 
decay ! 

There are such things as spiritual possessions, 
as well as intellectual possessions and material 
wealth. The first of these a life of sin utterly 
loses for us: and they are the most valuable. 
They are the very assets we need for old age. 

Compare three old men, near life's verge, 
with a few years to live. It is not now a ques- 
tion whether their Heavenly Father will receive 
them when they die. They are counting up 
their treasures, comparing net assets of such 
capital as can be used and enjoyed during the 
brief balance of their earthly time. 

And one says, " The result of my life of activ- 
ity and skill is, that I own so many thousands of 
acres of rich land, and so many blocks of city, 
houses, and so many millions of paying stock, 
and so many millions of gold." He has nothing 
else. 

The second says, " I have toiled quite as hard 
as my friend who has just spoken, and have 
not enough money left to mention. But I have 
enriched myself from the literature of all ages, 
and have instructed myself in the science of all 
departments. And I would not sell out to my 
friend for all his millions, from which, at best, 
he can get only a cushion for his gouty foot, and 
a pillow for his aching head, while he trembles 
through his last years, and has no intellectual 
resource, no thoughts that wander through the 
universe, no knowledge of the products of human 
mental efforts. I would not swap." And he is 
right. 

The third has nothing to say. He actually 



Characteristics 



of a Sinful Life. 



259 



owns nothing taxable. He has no learning. In 
the markets and in the schools he is equally 
unknown. But he has possessions, such as are 
accounted in the census of the skies, in the 
Domesday-Book of heaven. They are spiritual 
possessions. His money and toil have gone 
into churches, chapels, asylums, orphan-houses, 
training-houses, where men and women and 
children are taught truth, and love, and faith, 
where they are brought under influences which 
fit them to live on earth, and become meet 
to be partakers of the inheritance of the 
saints in light. There are many men now 
living whom he picked up in their boyhood, 
or perhaps in their babyhood, and trained 
for Jesus, and now they shine in society, — 
good souls among bad men, as lights in dark 
places. There are children and their mothers 
in the upper glory, whom he eased through 
death, putting in their hands the clue of a true 
faith : and they await his coming. He has a 
thousand spiritual possessions, treasures on 
earth, and treasures in heaven. 

Now, putting aside thoughts of sin and doom 
for an instant, look at those three rich men : all 
rich : but how their riches differ ! Who is the 
richest? For this world ? Or the next? Who ? 
You know. 

It is impossible to have these spiritual fruits, 
and lead a life of sin, whatever other things we 
may continue to gain. And it is a most pitiable 
sight to behold an old man, learned and pecuni- 
arily rich, about to die, going out from this 
"warm and customary life" into eternity, with 
nothing he can show beyond the grave. His 
learning has been unfruitful, because he had 
not wisdom. His life of sinful selfishness had 
befooled him. His riches have been unfruitful. 
He has not learned how to get the best uses of 
money. When the Angel of Eternity comes to 
question him at the last, he can show no 
"fruit," nothing but leaves, leaves that the 
frost has blighted, — sere, dead leaves. No fruit ! 
No fruit ! There is no fruit off sin, but disap- 
pointments, bitternesses, and deaths ! 

I have purposely devoted the most of this dis- 
course to the consideration of the first charac- 
teristic of a sinful life, suggested by the Apostle, 
namely, its barrenness. We have time simply 
to glance at the others. 

II. The next to notice is its slavery. 

Sin is never our servant. If at first it seems 
to be obsequious, it is to ensnare. It may bow 
itself to our feet, but it is to put fetters on us. 
It may kiss our hands, but it is to manacle us. 
How thoroughly men befool themselves on this 



subject ! They suppose that they can command 
sinful pleasures, and that these will wait on them 
like lacqueys, will fetch and carry for them, 
will play the part of Genii in the fables, and 
bring them all kinds of delights. 

And the experience of all ages, and the re- 
cords of all observers, fail to convince us that this 
is thoroughly a false view. Even our own expe- 
rience often seems powerless to reform us. The 
very moment a man begins to sin he begins to 
be a slave. He cannot break loose when he will. 
The fact of having served takes away his lofti- 
ness, and humiliates him. The Apostle asks, 
" Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves 
servants to obey, his servants ye are whom ye 
obey f" We ought to know it : but we do not. 
And that is an element of the case which in- 
tensifies the frightfulness of a life of sin, that 
a man may be dancing about in chains and not 
know it, until he attempts to depart in freedom , 
then the chain is discovered. 

Every hour it strengthens. 

Oh, how heart-rending have been the cries that 
have come up from the depths, up from men 
who were wrestling with their chains and could 
not break them ! Read Paul's experience in 
the seventh chapter to the Romans. Read 
De Quincy's " Confessions of an English Opium- 
Eater. " Read poor Charles Lamb's "Confes- 
sions of a Drunkard." I shall never forget how 
I was thrilled, some time ago, when this was 
read to me by a man of ability, of education, 
of genius, and of family, a man who bore honor- 
ary titles, who had fallen under the power of this 
fell intoxication. Holding the book with trem- 
bling hands, and reading the passage with all his 
ability, he exclaimed, " Oh, sir, that is only part 
of it. Lamb had never been dragged as low 
as I have been. There are horrors he has not 
recorded. But I will free myself. I will be 
free !"• But, alas L he has not been able. 

The completion of the tyranny of sin is the 
paralysis of the will-power. 

III. Another characteristic of a life of sin is 
its shamef ulness. 

It is a shame for any man to put himself in 
an improper position. 

It is a shame to violate the sanctity of high 
relationship. 

A life of sin does both these for the sinner. 
It is not simply a lower position than that which 
he ought to occupy ; for a man may imitate 
Jesus, and make himself of no reputation, and 
take upon him the form of a servant, and become 
obedient unto death, even the lowliest form of 
an ignominious death; and he may do this with- 



260 



Characteristics of a Sinful Life. 



out dishonor ; he may do it for heroic reasons, 
for such reasons as are involved in every act of 
manly self-sacrifice ; and he may honor all the 
best relationships of humanity in so doing. But 
he cannot do these things from low and selfish 
motives without disgracing his nature and his 
person. There is the dishonor of sinfulness. It 
is the dishonor of a prince become a rebel. It 
is Absalom's dishonor. It is indecent. It is un- 
becoming a child of God, and an heir of God's 
grand estate. It is what the right minds in the 
universe condemn, and what the sinner himself 
condemns in his moments of better thought and 
feeling. It is what hurts the reputation with the 
better class of intelligences. It is what will cover 
the man with confusion when the discovery shall 
be made. 

The prophet Daniel says that " many of them 
that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, 
some to shame and everlasting contempt." 7§o 
be hated the noblest souls can bear : but who 
can bear shame ? Who can endure contempt? 
Think of everlasting contmept ! Think of being 
endlessly despicable ! 

IV. The last characteristic of a sinful life to 
which the Apostle alludes is its destructive?iess : 
" the end of those things is death." 

Men do not generally consider this : they do 
not look to the end. But whenever the subject 
is thoughtfully considered, the glory and good- 
ness of the law become more conspicuous by 
every proof that we have the most enjoyable use 
of all our faculties by using them according to 
law. Within that limit is not only safety, but 
pleasure ; beyond it, is the beginning of destruc- 
tion. 

The amplest demonstrations of this statement 
lie all about us. 

On the lowest plane of our being we soon learn 
that the indulgence of our appetites is a pleasure 
which may be continued so long as we keep in 
the circle of law. The moment we pass beyond, 
we begin to incapacitate ourselves for enjoyment 
both outside and inside the circle of law. A 
glutton so injures his digestion that he impairs 
his appetite, and his food becomes unsavory. 
A drunkard finds at last that his appetite loathes 
that which his vitiated system demands, and it 
is painful to prosecute the process of intoxica- 
tion. 

It is so in the department of the intellect. 

It is so with the spirit. The vital principle may 
be exhilarated unlawfully, but when it comes back 
to what is its normal action, it finds a loss of vital- 



ity. ''The end is death," the process is a 
dying. 

A life of sin is death to character. We take 
this word, which we now use to designate the 
sum-total of a man's qualities, from a word which 
means a distinctive mark. It includes the idea 
of engraving; as if on the substance of the spirit 
there were a picture of beauty or an inscription 
of honor, separating and distinguishing that 
spirit. It may represent a statue. Sin is a 
defacing and disfiguring process. Every sin 
rubs over the inscription, and more and more 
dims it, until, in the end, the whole inscription 
has been obliterated. Every sin touches or rubs 
or hits the statue, until here a feature and there 
a limb begins to lose its expression and its round- 
ness, until the statue is reduced to a torso, and 
finally becomes a ruin. 

Day by day, in every sinful life, is that process 
going forward. The sinner is losing the inscrip- 
tion which God has made on him, "This is 
my child." He is every moment being changed 
from the image of God. The end of these 
things is the death of desirable character, a per- 
petual, horrible, conscious death-in-life. 

Dearly beloved, before the end comes, let me 
beseech you to break away from sin. Be no 
longer its slave. Live no longer a shameful life. 
You can be saved. Others have found the great 
salvation. So may you. But you cannot do it 
in your own strength. You must let Jesus be 
your deliverer. The Apostle teaches you that 
you may free yourselves from the slavery of sin, 
"if ye obey from the heart that form of doctrine 
which has been delivered to you." 

When you begin to repent, you will begin to 
be ashamed of all that barren life which you 
have led. But that will be a sweet shame, a 
shame such as is produced by the tenderness of 
the loving Father as he receives his returning 
son. It will be the ruddy dawn of a morning 
that shall drive all the dark night of your sinful 
life away. 

But if you have not that shame, there will 
come a shame that shall be like the lurid sunset, 
growing darker and darker, presaging a night 
of storms and horrors. "The wages of sin is 
death," says the Apostle, terrible pay for 
wretched service! "But," he adds, "the gift 
of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our 
Lord." You have had no fruit from sin. Oh, 
now, be " made free from sin," and "become 
servants of God," and then "ye shall have your 
fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life." 



XLII. 

*'l ENTREAT THEE, TRUE YOKE-FELLOW, HELP THOSE WOMEN WHO LABORED WITH ME IN THIS 

GOSPEL." PHILIPPIANS, IV. 3. 



" Made of a woman !" 

This is Paul's brief and sublime description 
of the incarnation of the Divine. 

In regard to everything, politics, philosophy, 
art, science, social life, men, women, children, 
the household, the Church, and the State, the 
day when Mary in Bethlehem held her first-born 
in her arms is the dividing-line of all human 
history. 

Nothing has been the same since. We can- 
not reason in regard to men and events before 
Jesus as if they were such men and such events 
as might be now. If the old Hebrew, Greek, 
and Roman politicians, legislators, philosophers, 
artists, tradesmen, husbands, and wives should 
be set down, in our century, among our litera- 
tures and our movements, they would be in a 
new world. 

Jesus has done this. 

Perhaps the most remarkable characteristic 
of the external changes of society is that they 
have been mainly wrought through a change 
effected by the life of Jesus, in the position and 
work — may I not say in the very character? — of 
woman. She has not been the same since that 
wonderful Birth. And she has been in such po- 
sition as to bring the influence of her changed 
character and modes of life to bear on all society. 
Jesus has changed the history of men by having 
changed the condition and spirit of women. 

All of us now living have been trained under 
this new style of things which had worked 
eighteen centuries before the most of us were 
born. We cannot, without an effort, conceive 
the state of affairs in regard to women, their 
training, their position, their influence, before 
Jesus came. It was so totally different from 
what it now is ! There was nothing in the cul- 
ture of power under the Roman civilization, noth- 
ing in the culture of philosophy and taste under 
the Greek civilization, nothing in the culture of 
religion under the Hebrew civilization, which is 
at all like the position and influence of women 



under the culture of Christian civilization. That 
one Bethlehem babe of that simple Jewish 
maiden has done more for Roman, Greek, and 
Hebrew men than the Caesars, the Alexanders, 
and the Maccabees, with their swords, or the 
Numas, the Lycurguses, and the Moseses with 
their tables of laws. 

Whatever may have been the case among 
heathen nations, we might suppose that, under 
the Hebrew theocracy and in the Jewish church, 
woman would have had a place not unlike that 
which she occupies under Christianity. And 
yet we know that it was not so. History teaches 
us as much. To me there is something much 
more impressive than mere historical statements 
of ancient social facts ; it is the difference in 
the tone of all literature, especially of the sacred 
books, not only in what they specifically teach 
about women, but in all their mentions of and 
allusions to women. 

How very old the Old Testament is, and how 
very new the New Testament is ! In the former, 
as in the latter, we have allusions to virgins, 
to wives, and to widows, but how different the 
spirit of the writings ! 

In regard to the first, the Old Testament is 
pervaded by the Oriental idea which confined 
virginity to the mere preservation of the body 
inviolate, and so young unmarried women were 
carefully concealed and veiled, that men might 
not reach them until they came to be betrothed 
and married. And so the very Hebrew word for 
virgin, Almah, signifies one who is hidden, con- 
cealed, shut up. 

In the New Testament the whole spirit is dif- 
ferent. Virgins may go abroad. Virgins may 
engage in works of religious charity as freely as 
matrons or widows. The whole temper of the 
teaching of the New Testament is that she only 
is a real virgin whose thought is chaste and 
whose soul is pure. Jesus has so changed the 
world that while greater freedom of social inter- 
course is given to our daughters, the bond of 



262 



Help those Women. 



duty and purity is made stronger and more 
beautiful. 

The same remark holds good of wives. The 
tone and temper of the Old Testament is such, 
that while in comparison with the representations 
of the conjugal estate among heathen nations, 
that of wives among the Hebrews was elevated, 
tnere is almost never present the recognition of 
an equality of interest, a partnership of love, 
and an equal share in all the destiny of the 
family. The wife was useful in being the 
mother of children, of sons that might add to 
the family wealth and dignity, of daughters who 
might be the wives of other men ; and the wife 
was further serviceable in the capacity of cook, 
housekeeper, and general servant to her lord. 
Sometimes it happened that he loved her, as 
Isaac did Rebecca and as Jacob did Rachel, but 
that was not thought to be absolutely indispen- 
sable. There was no necessary partnership of 
love in marriage. You will take notice that/1 
am speaking of the general impression made by 
the Old Testament. 

It is far otherwise in the New Testament. 
There is no relaxation of the tie of marriage. There 
is no change in the general work of the husband 
and wife, relatively. She is still to obey. The 
husband is still the head of the wife. He is still 
to provide for the household, — she not. She is 
still to do the domestic work, — he not. He has 
no right to go about any pleasure or business 
which makes him fail to provide for the family: 
she has no right to any employment or pleasure 
until the domestic work is done. But how all 
that domestic apartment is brightened by the 
gospel of the Son of Mary ! How that " lord " 
of a man became a love of a man ! 

The old Hebrew husband had no glory from 
his wife. She might be beautiful as one of the 
cherubim of the Mercy-seat, she might be as 
witty as any of "the wise ladies" of the mother 
of Sisera, she might be as good as an angel; he 
had no glory of it. He had all this in the 
meagreness of a solitary enjoyment. She did 
not have what our wise and good and lovely 
wives have, the enjoyment of knowing that she 
shed glory on her beloved husband. She never 
entered into his plans of greatness in effort, and 
she was allowed to have none of her own. 

But Jesus changed all that by lifting the wife 
into a loving partnership with the husband, until 
Peter's wife shared the toils and glorious fruits 
of her husband's Apostolate, and Aquila and 
Priscilla are coupled in loving work for Jesus 
and for humanity, and until all wives are placed 
toward their husbands as Jesus placed the 



Church toward Himself, His Ever-bride for 
whom He died, and who lived ever with Him, in 
holy work on earth, and in happy glory in 
heaven. 

The same holds good of widows. In the sixth 
chapter of the Acts we read that "there arose a 
murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews, 
because their widows were neglected in the daily 
ministration." Such a murmuring could not 
have occurred in the Hebrew church, in the 
state of public opinion before Jesus. Even these 
Hebrews had become so little christianized as to 
be neglectful of widows. The law of the Lord 
was very emphatic against those who defrauded 
and oppressed the widow and the fatherless, and 
yet there fails to be an honorable recognition of 
widowhood in the Old Testament. The widow 
was "rather the subject of compassion," as Dr. 
Howson says, who adds that, " if we turn beyond 
the pages of the Scriptures to other early Jewish 
writings, they seem to place her almost in a 
position of contempt." 

But the New Testament speaks of her ; does 
not put her out of sight ; speaks of her tenderly, 
as in the ninth chapter of the Acts, in that 
affecting picture of the dead Dorcas, with the 
circle of widows standing about her and showing 
Peter the garments her industrious and faithful 
hands had made. 

Paul is not much in favor with the " advanced 
females" of this period, and is not generally 
supposed to have had much gallantry in his 
spirit or manner. His work and bodily ailments 
and abstract studies may have made him a little 
reserved in manners; but surely it would be 
difficult to find a passage in any man's writings 
of which women should be more proud than that 
address of Paul's to Timothy, in the fifth chap- 
ter of his first letter : "Entreat the elder women 
as mothers, the younger as sisters, with all 
purity." I beg especially the young men of 
my church to take that rule for their guidance : 
a strict observance of it will render them model 
Christian gentlemen, and be a benediction to all 
the women of the church. 

Then, on this topic of which we are now 
speaking, hear Paul: " Honor widows that are 
widows indeed." Such a sentence was never on 
human lips or pen before the Saviour came. 
See how he describes an honorable widowhood : 
" She that is a widow indeed, and desolate, trust- 
eth in God, and continueth in supplications and 
prayer night and day." See how he recognizes 
the valuable services of widows : "Having been 
the wife of one man, well reported of for good 
works ; if she have brought up children, if she 



Help those Women. 



263 



have lodged strangers, if she have washed the 
saints' feet, if she have relieved the afflicted, if 
she have dutifully followed every good work." 
What a programme for a fruitful and beautiful 
life in widowhood ! He was not willing that 
Timothy should take young widows into the 
diaconate of the church, because there was 
something better for them to do: "I will, 
therefore, that the younger women marry, bear 
children, guide the house, give none occasion to 
the enemy to speak reproachfully." 

In these three conditions of woman's life we 
have compared the Christian culture with the 
Hebrew, and, in so doing, have selected the very 
best of the ancient civilizations for women. If 
time allowed we might show how much worse 
was her condition under ancient barbarism, and 
under the civilization of Greece and Rome, in 
which she was always wholly ignored or treated 
as the mere instrument of man's lusts, or the 
plaything of his pastime, or the servant of his 
wants. But time would fail. 

Christianity is the only form of religion which 
was inaugurated and first propagated through 
woman. 

The mystery of the incarnation set aside 
woman for the sanctities of life in a manner 
which has had its influence on art and litera- 
ture and social intercourse ever since Jesus lived 
and died. That in becoming visibly connected 
with our race the Eternal God should have been 
" made of woman" and not of man, that He 
should become the Son of Man by becoming a 
son of a woman, is a fresh exhibition of the 
exquisite delicacy of God's character and love. 

The treatment of the Mother Mary by Jesus, 
has secured to woman a vast, and, I fear, gen- 
erally unacknowledged, boon. He might have 
made her a goddess. He might have kept His 
mother from having other sons, which it would 
seem He did not. He might have associated 
her in His march of miracle through the land, 
but He did not. His treatment of her at the 
Cana miracle shows how He intended that she 
should never be considered a divine woman as 
He was to be a Divine Man. He might have 
carried her up with Him in the Ascension, and 
so left for her name a glory it can never have, 
but losing the womanly glory which now belongs 
to it. But He did not. Nor did He leave her 
Regent of the Church in His absence. Nor did 
He give her any social and ecclesiastical posi- 
tion. He left her simply this inheritance of 
beautiful honor that she should be remembered 
as His mother, " Mary, the Mother of Jesus." 

In all His progress Jesus was attended by 



women. They seemed best to appreciate Him, 
if not to understand Him. They seemed best 
fitted to give that kind of ministration needed to 
impart an impulse to the infant bands of Chris- 
tian believers. Jesus did not repel women, but 
drew them about Him. Joanna the wife of 
Chuza, a man of rank in Herod's court, was his 
friend. "The mother of Zebedee's children," 
and Mary, the wife of Cleopas, and Mary and 
Martha the sisters of Lazarus, and Mary of 
Magdala, were cherished friends. How they 
loved him ! How much more constant they 
were than the men who professed devotion to 
Him! 

It is a remarkable fact that the first declara- 
tion of His Messiahship made by the Son of God 
was not in announcement to the Sanhedrim, the 
great Council of His nation, who never could 
extract an acknowledgment from Him ; nor was 
it to Nicodemus, a learned, influential, and 
moral man, who seems to have visited Him to 
be informed of His claims and purposes ; but it 
was to a woman, a woman not of His race or 
nation, not of His faith and practice, a Samari- 
tan woman, whose life had been stained. 

It is another remarkable fact that when He 
burst the bars of the grave, His resurrection 
was not first announced to men, to His male 
friends and disciples, but to women, to sainted 
Mary of Magdala, to the mother of James the 
Less, and to Salome. These first saw Him when 
He left the grave. These first had the light of 
the resurrection thrown on life and immortality-. 
These first beheld Him in the resumed body He 
was to carry into the heavens. These first con- 
veyed to the Apostles the news of that fact whose 
announcement was to shake down the Temple 
in Jerusalem, and all the pagan temples in 
Greek and Roman cities. 

There must be something in woman especially 
fitted for the ministry of the saints in gospel- 
work. The example and teaching of Jesus seem 
to have inspired confidence in His apostles to 
employ the aid of women tn planting the socie- 
ties that were to bear the name of Jesus and 
propagate His principles. 

In the records which have been preserved of 
the career of the foremost man of early Chris- 
tianity, the most gifted, the most energetic, the 
Apostle Paul, this comes out most conspicu- 
ously, even in incidental statements. I have 
already alluded to the fact that Paul is not pop- 
ular with "those women" of our day, who are 
laboring to destroy the family as it rests on the 
foundation of Christianity, but even they owe 
more to the teaching of Paul than they take 



264 



Help those Women. 



time to consider or have the grace to acknowl- 
edge. That man is not to be spoken of in a 
flippant way as a soured old bachelor or an 
embittered widower, who had such an array of 
friends among women as Paul manifestly en- 
joyed. It is really a most interesting catalogue 
that can be mac|e of them from the salutations 
which he sends them in his letters. "Those 
women" deserve to have their names repeated 
here. 

First of all was Phcebe, a deaconess, whom 
Paul calls "our sister," and to whom he en- 
trusted a letter to the Church in Rome, com- 
manding her to be received in a manner as 
becomes the saints, and assisted in whatever 
business she might have need of them; "for 
she has been a succorer of many and of myself 
also," says the Apostle. In Rome was Aquila 
with his wife Priscilla, who, having formerly been 
driven from the city, and being tentmakers, 
took up with Paul in Corinth and became; 
Christians, and had a " church in their house" 
in Rome. Of Priscilla, and of her husband, 
Paul declared that they were his "helpers in 
Christ Jesus," who had for his life ''laid down 
their own necks." There was also a Mary in 
Rome, who had "bestowed much labor" on 
Paul, and there were Junia, who was his "kins- 
woman," and Tryphena and Tryphosa, "who 
labored in the Lord/' and Persis, "who labored 
much in the Lord," and the mother of Rums, 
" his mother," says Paul so tenderly, " and 
mine:" besides Julia and the sister of Nereus. 
These were so notably his friends in one church, 
and had so singularly devoted themselves to 
him in the prosecution of his great work as an 
Apostle, that he felt it right to mention their 
names in a letter which was to be publicly read 
in the church. Here are ten distinguished wo- 
men mentioned in one letter, and all the friends 
of Paul, whom he specially valued, as every 
true-hearted Christian minister values his friends 
among women, because they helped him in his 
great work. 

Christianity did not set woman free from her 
obligations as mother and wife, but it did set 
her leisure and her powers free from the im- 
prisonment of the harem, from the humdrum 
of the secluded Hebrew home, and from the 
demands of modern frivolous fashionable life, 
free to serve God in the ministry of a gospel in 
whose service " there is neither male nor female, 
neither bond nor free," in which woman can work 
as well as man, and the slave as well as his mas- 
ter. The first Apostles acknowledged that, and 
acted upon it, and the rapid growth of Christi- 



anity at the beginning, in its human instrumen- 
talities, is largely due to this holy sagacity. 

It has been noticed that Europe is the conti- 
nent on which Christianity has found the best 
soil. Its position, and place in history, give it 
superior importance. Europe has populated one 
continent, and has paramount influence over 
the others. This is due to the elements which 
Christianity has introduced into her civilization. 
But Christianity was inaugurated in Europe by an 
Asiatic woman. The history of this quiet but 
most important movement is given with simpli- 
city and brevity in the sixteenth chapter of the 
Acts of the Apostles. 

Paul had been laboring in Asia Minor to plant 
the gospel of Jesus. There came upon him a 
strange spiritual restraint, so that he was "for- 
bidden of the Holy Ghost" to continue his work 
in that section. Then, in a vision, a man of 
Macedonia said to Paul, "Come over to Mace- 
donia and help us !" He went at once, and, by 
an unusally short voyage, was landed at Neapolis, 
the seaport of Philippi, to which city he went 
immediately. It was the most important town 
in that section, and was a Roman military 
station. There must have been few Jews there. 
There was no synagogue, but there was a 
prayer-place by the river. Thither Paul and his 
companion went. There were no other men 
present. Some few devout women came to 
pray. Paul taught them. 

One was converted. She was a woman en- 
gaged in trade. She was a seller of purple from 
Thyatira, temporarily in this Italian colony in 
Greece. God opened her heart and she opened 
her house, and with a quiet like the dawn Chris- 
tianity took its place in Europe. Perhaps she 
carried the gospel-truth with her to her own 
home, to which a message was sent in the Apoc- 
alypse, through "the angel of the church in 
Thyatira." At any rate, she was the first con- 
vert in Europe, and she was a working-member 
of the renewed church. When the Apostle was 
driven from Philippi she nursed the infant 
church, and of that church Paul speaks more 
lovingly than of any other he had served, for 
it became his "joy " and his " crown." 

I cannot forbear saying that in church- 
service modern ministers find what Paul dis- 
covered, that their most active helpers are not 
so often " ladies " of wealth and leisure, of whom 
so much ought to be expected, as of those 
women who make their daily bread by their 
needles, by being "sellers of purple" or of* 
fine linen, or toilers in the factories whose larger 
dividends go to the stockholders rather than to 



Help those Women. 



265 



the operatives. On this tradeswoman Lydia is 
set the crown of being the beginning of the 
reign of Jesus in Europe. 

The result of Paul's preaching in Athens is 
stated thus : " Certain men clave unto him, 
and believed ; among the which was Dionysius 
the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, 
and others with them." Two persons among 
the converts, in that centre of intellectual activity 
and culture, were such as deserved a mention 
of distinction, and one of them was a woman. 

It seems to me that this rapid review points to 
two things, namely, the adaptedness of woman 
to Christian work, and the need Christianity 
must always have for her services. 

i. That men are to take the heavier burdens 
of Christianity, that they are to be the preachers, 
the heralds of the principles and claims of Jesus, 
would seem to be very apparent, not only from 
the constitution of their sex, but also from the 
teaching of Holy Scripture, and the practice of 
Jesus and His Apostles. The public church-work 
naturally falls to man, and the private to woman. 
There is a most important part of that work 
which men cannot do and women can. 

Everywhere woman has shown a peculiar re- 
ceptivity for the doctrines and the spirit of the 
gospel, as, when He was in the flesh, they mani- 
fested a peculiar appreciation of Jesus. Ordi- 
narily, there have been more female converts to 
Christianity than males. There have been men 
who were senseless enough to allege this as an 
objection to Christianity, and some Christian 
men who have been a little sensitive as to the 
statement of the fact. 

But, is not the best of every man that which 
he has received from the mother's side ? Is not 
the female part of any species the propagative 
side? Is not the noblest face on a man's head 
that which has the most delicate feminine lines 
traced on the surface of most manly strength ? 
Is not the best physiqiie for a man that which 
has the best composition of female delicacy with 
masculine vigor? Is not that the best genius 
which has the most suppleness of feminine grace 
and agility combined with the greatest volume 
of masculine force ? 

It has its suggestion in the profoundest phy- 
sical and metaphysical knowledge of human 
nature, that if " God" is to be " manifest in the 
flesh," the incarnation of the Divine should be 
through woman rather than through man. It 
is not to be wondered that the system of religion 
of that Man who had a mother but not a father 
should find the sex of our mothers more receptive 
than the sex of our fathers. 



Woman has, also, greater plastic power than man. 

Each of us to-day stands before the world brought 
to what he is by the influence upon him of wo- 
men more than of men. We have been shaped 
by our mothers rather than by our fathers, by 
our sisters rather than by our brothers, by our 
sweethearts and wives more than by our chums 
and comrades, and even by our daughters more 
than by our sons. There is a soft and persistent 
pressure in woman which is formative of what 
ever falls under her influence. God has gra- 
ciously and gracefully made her so. When she 
has received the instrumentality of Christianity 
with which to work, her power as a teacher 
becomes greatly enhanced. 

2. Her social position gives woman great 
advantages for religious work. 

It always did. No matter what man has made 
of woman, he never could do without her. 
When a person in any position becomes neces- 
sary, that person becomes influential. But 
Christianity, by its quiet readjustment of the 
social life, has placed woman where her great 
receptive and plastic powers have full play. 

She is the first to get at a man. He is born 
into her arms, born in perfect helplessness, born 
so that a man can do little for him, and a woman 
is necessary to him, and that woman must be 
his mother. She binds his heart to her heart 
before he becomes conscious of having an intel- 
lect. She is alone with him. The father " has 
gone a-hunting," hunting game, like Nimrod, 
or fame, like Caesar, or gold, like you. He 
may have gone, as the nursery-song has it, 

" To get a rabbit-skin to wrap the little baby in," 

but while he has gone the mother sings that 
lullaby to the baby, and the mother's song does 
more to make that baby than all the rabbit-skins 
or finest furs in which he can be wrapt. 

She is always nearest to men when we are 
most open to be influenced ; in our quiet, off- 
guard, gown-and-slippers hours. She could not 
do much with us when we are trading, fuming 
about the markets, rushing about the. streets, 
girded for war, roaring and swearing in the 
heat of battle, nor when we are amid grave 
public duties, — preaching from the pulpit or 
administering justice from the bench. In a 
panic the men in Wall-street would run over a 
woman as they would over a cat. But when the 
battle has been fought, and the business has 
been accomplished, and the aching head and 
tired limbs are brought home to rest, then her 
hour of silent imperialism begins, then she in- 
stills herself into her father, her husband, her 



266 



Kelp those Women. 



son, by glance of eye, and touch of finger-tips, 
and softest kiss of lip, and by her thousand 
little unconscious sweetnesses, which are all the 
sweeter because they are indescribable. 

Women may go where men cannot. Men 
will listen to women on subjects upon which 
they would not allow men to address them. 
You may build an ark and save yourself from 
the deluge, but what are you going to do with 
the dew ? That is a silent but powerful influ- 
ence. So it has happened that men over whom 
clergymen have had no influence even when 
they had access, have been won by the godly 
conversation of their modest, quiet, judicious 
wives. There are places in this city into which 
women can carry the gospel of our Lord and 
Saviour, which you and I, brethren, could not 
enter with any hope of doing good. 

If ever there was an age in which woman's 
work for Jesus was needed, it is this age. Our 
foreign missionary operations have taught us 
that in heathen countries there are walls so high 
and so strong that the white horse of the gospel 
can neither leap over nor break through, but 
the angel who bears the everlasting gospel can 
fly over them and carry the gospel beyond. 
That angel is woman. She can gather classes 
and form schools in secret places, hiding away 
the true germ of the principles of the gospel 
where they will sprout and flower and send 
blooms over desolate lands. 

Christianity is designed to be most especially 
the "Church in the House." Our modern 
church-service is specially useful as it'quickens 
home religion. When Jesus first sent out apos- 
tles, they were not to make organizations nor 
build edifices. They were to go from house to 
* house. Each family-dwelling was to be a sanc- 
tuary. In every house was to be erected the 
home-altar. It was years and years before any 
Christian society owned a church edifice. I do 
not suppose that any of the original twelve 
apostles, or even Paul, ever entered such a 
building. But Christianity grew marvellously. 
It spread with a rapidity which Mohammedism 
could not imitate, even with all the force of the 
sword. It was the Church in the House, and 
women were the great propagators of a faith 
whose field was the home-circle. 

That God designs Christianity to be always a 
home religion seems indicated by the fact that, 
in every age, under every form of civilization, 
that church has made most progress which has 
best learned how to organize and employ the 
agency of woman. The association may hold to 
wrong doctrines, and have a false basis in some 



other particulars, and men may be able to resist 
priest and clergyman, but when a poor forlorn 
wretch wakes from the delirium of a contagious 
fever, and sees a quiet woman sitting by his 
bedside, who, through all the days he has been 
riding his sea of fire, has kept a steady hand on 
the helm and brought him around again, she 
becomes to him the Muse of Faith, the sister of 
his soul, and she can lead him where she will. 

Dear brethren, I have said these things be- 
cause I felt that your attention should be called 
to Woman's Work and Woman's Power, and 
that you might reflect upon what women have 
done and are doing, and that I might have an 
opportunity of enforcing on you the exhorta- 
tion of Paul to some strong Philippian brother, 
"Help those women who have labored with me 
in the gospel." 

Dear sisters, I have said these things because 
there are some women working in this Church 
who do not have the sympathy and co-operation 
of the others, and because I feel that there is a 
great talent lying useless, wrapped in a napkin, 
and none the better because that napkin may be 
of finest linen or point-lace. I know, too, that 
there are women willing to labor for Jesus if they 
only knew how and where. My knowledge of 
my own congregation and my correspondence 
gives me this assurance. 

W T e are to do two things : to instruct women 
for Christian work and to organize that work. 

Women are not to be blamed for saying, " I 
do not know how to begin nor what to do." It 
is the truth. It is idle to say, " Oh, go to work 
for the Lord, and the way will open." That may 
be done if there be no means of learning how to 
begin ; but if there be, it should be used. A 
man may begin to trade, and if he have a vigor- 
ous intellect and robust health, he may keep 
trading and trading until he learn from his losses 
how to make gain ; but how much better to have 
been educated for mercantile life. It is so here. 
We need trained women. 

We need them here, on this great missionary 
field of New York. 

The pastors need them. I do believe that 
there are no more faithful and hardworking men 
than the pastors of this city, Catholic and Pro- 
testant. The few years I have been in the field 
has impressed me with that. There are some 
that have better bodies and minds than I have, 
and do more than I can do. I am not acquainted 
with one who does less, and I give thirteen hard 
working-hours to my church every day except 
Sundays, and you know what I do on that day. 
Do we ever finish our work ? Never. We go to 



Help those Women. 



267 



bed at night often jaded, feeling that each day's 
labor widens our fields, but does not increase our 
resources. 

You laymen need some organization that shall 
help you. If you give a tenth of your annual 
income — and you are not even a fair Jew if you 
do not, to say nothing of being a consecrated 
Christian — you need to know how that money is 
going. You desire to relieve distress. The city 
swarms with dissolute impostors. They divert 
thousands of dollars from the deserving poor, 
for the most deserving poor are those who never 
apply to you. You have not time to investigate 
the cases. You need an organization of trained 
women that shall assist your beneficence, as I 
need such an organization to help my pastor- 
ate. 

Is there such an institution ? There is : and 
many of you have never heard of it. Let me 
engage your attention a few minutes while I tell 
you something you ought to know. 

The Female Auxiliary Bible Society of this 
city has for years employed a number of " Bible 
Readers." Their duty is thus described : " To 
go daily among the neglected classes, to ascer- 
tain their wants, hopes, fears, to interest them in 
the Scriptures and invite them to hear preach- 
ing, to aid them in seeking employment, and to 
become the agents for dispensing charities to 
deserving subjects, in behalf of the great organ- 
ized institutions, and such individuals as may 
make them their almoners." 

The number of these women is not large ; but 
the good they have accomplished is past all 
human computation. They have been untrained 
women. They have experienced that wastage 
which always attends a want of training. What 
might they not have done if they had been 
trained ? That question led last year to the at- 
tempt to establish a Training Home. The plan 
was presented to a few friends, and money 
enough to carry it forward one year was soon 
obtained. Now it has been determined to make 
it a permanent institution, if the Lord will. 

Such institutions in Europe have had a great 
success. Perhaps some of you do not know the 
history of the " Deaconesses of Kaiserswerth." In 
brief it is this : In 1833, a good pastor of a lit- 
tle village called Kaiserswerth, near Dusseldorf, 
in Germany, began the work of visiting the pris- 
ons. His name will be in everlasting remem- 
brance — Theodore Fliedner. Moved by the for- 
lorn condition of those who were discharged, 
especially of the women, he commenced, on a 
very small scale, to provide for those who had 
no protectors. In 1836 he opened his deaconess- 



house and hospital, without a deaconess and 
without a patient and with almost no furniture. 
In twenty-eight years his work at Kaiserswerth 
had grown almost into a town. More than five 
hundred deaconesses had been trained there, 
and twenty similar institutions had sprung up 
in various parts of Europe. At Kaiserswerth 
was Florence Nightingale trained for her great 
and beautiful work in the Crimea. 

In this country we need such a place of train- 
ing, and by God's grace we shall have it, a 
Home where Christian women can have training 
in all things necessary to make them skilled, 
successful workers among the masses, servants of 
the poor, the sick, and the young, for the sake of 
our Lord Jesus Christ, going among the masses, 
bringing them to the churches, bearing the gospel 
to them, carrying cleanliness and godliness, or- 
derliness and industry, with them ; not supervisors 
of the less favored portions of the community, 
but co-operators ; not diminishing the labor of 
pastors, but imparting to those labors manifold 
efficacy; keeping your benefactions from being 
premiums to idleness, and rendering them helps 
to the worthy who are unfortunate. 

All the Churches in this city will be called 
upon for help. Brethren, we must do our part. 
God has been good to us. He has largely com- 
mitted to us the " strangers that are within our 
gates." We supplement the work of all the 
older churches, with whom we are in Christian 
amity, and who have treated us with marked 
liberality. Our " Sisters of the Strangers " are 
doing a blessed work in a quiet way. They 
need just such an institution. If each Church 
contribute one dollar for each of its members, 
the work will be sustained. We shall train 
women to work in New York, in New England, 
in the Middle States, in the Southern States, 
and in the great West. We shall come back to 
old Apostolic methods, and the blessings of the 
Lord of Pentecost will come upon us. 

I shall send an " elect lady" of our communion 
to every member. She will ask only one dollar 
for this year. Let our youngest clerks on small- 
est salaries save and give that dollar. They 
know not how soon it will be paid them back, in 
their own persons, a thousand-fold. 

When she shall call upon you, then may each 
of you remember Paul's injunction to his friend 
in Rome, and mine this day to you, "I entreat 
thee, also, true yoke-fellow, help those women 
who labor with me in the gospel;" and may all 
the blessings of the gospel of our Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Christ come upon you, and upon 
yours, now and forever ! Amen ! 



XLIII. 

"KE WAS ANGRY, AND WOULD NOT GO IN." LUKE, XV. 28. 



It is quite remarkable that preachers so often 
preach about the Prodigal Son, and so seldom 
have anything to say of the Elder Brother ; and 
when they do, that that something is so exceed- 
ingly and adroitly apologetic. 

Now, the parable opens with the saying that a 
certain man had two sons, and goes on to show 
that the father was unfortunate in the fact that 
both his sons were sinners. And the parable 
describes these men as representative and typical 
men, showing the two types of sin : the one, the 
outbreaking, Prodigal type ; the other, the sneak- 
ing, Pharisaic type. So that every man in his 
course of sin may probably be found to be in 
one of these two categories. He is at all times 
the Prodigal Sinner or the Puritan Sinner. We 
come to-day to consider this Elder Son, who had 
all the bad traits of his brother save two, and 
then he had seven additional ugly, sinful charac- 
teristics. 

1. In the first place, he was generally a bad- 
tempered, uncomfortable individual. 

That is shown in the whole story that is told 
of him. Whenever he appears it makes us feel 
as though we did not want to have him too near 
us — a very bad characteristic for any man, 
Christian or otherwise. His father knew that 
he was an unpleasant person ; he had probably 
seen this disposition manifested before. It is 
remarkable, when the younger son was coming 
in, penitent and falling upon his father's neck, 
and the father falling upon this son's neck, and 
there was a fatted calf killed, and feasting and 
music in the house, that the elder brother was 
not there, and that his father did not call him in. 
His father knew that, however correct he might 
be externally, he was an exceedingly uncomfort- 
able son ; that there was something in his style of 
behavior which would put a chill on the festivities 
should that son come in when they were at their 
height. 

And now, dear brethren, let me stop awhile to 
warn you against being ill-tempered. You know 



some baptized Christians with whose outward 
demeanor you can find no fault ; but somehow 
they act as a kind of rasp ; they dash the bless- 
edness of society with a coldness and bitterness 
that makes society feel that they are very un- 
pleasant kind of Christians. If you call the at- 
tention of one such man to his unfortunate char- 
acteristic, he will reply, "Yes, but that is my 
natural temperament ; I cannot help it." 

This elder brother might have said the same. 
But, my friends, it is very far from being the 
Christian temper, very far from making you use- 
ful ; and if the Christian temper comes out in 
your life it will make you manly and agreeable. 
I do not believe in that kind of Christianity 
which makes men rough and ugly. I do not 
believe in that kind of Christianity which allows 
you to shelter your lack of manners behind your 
' 1 frankness. " I tell you the greater part of your 
" frankness" is want of good breeding. 

2. This elder brother was envious of his re- 
pentant brother. 

He inquired of the domestics, and learned 
from one of the servants that his brother had 
come, and instead of being glad at once, he 
began to be jealous and envious. While that 
brother was gone he had had full sweep ; he was 
glad he had been gone, and every time he heard 
of some forlorn scoundrel that had been hanged 
in a distant place, he hoped it was his brother, 
and said, " Good riddance to bad rubbush ; I 
shall never be troubled with him again." But 
by-and-by his brother came home, and the 
dancing and the music made discord in his ear. 
" He was angry, he would not go in." " I will 
not see my brother in his prosperity ; I thought 
he was dead, done for, gone out of my way ; 
that I could come in and take the whole of my 
father's affection and estate ; but here this fellow 
comes back and makes all this joy and glad-, 
ness." His conduct shows all this. 

You have seen Christian men that are just that 
way — Christian men that always groaned when- 



The Elder Brother. 



269 



ever any one else shouted — that always grew un- 
comfortable just as other people grew happy — in 
whose eyes the blazing light from festive scenes 
wrought a strange kind of darkness — on whose 
ear fell the gladness and music and dancing noise 
of the world around them and made them feel 
most miserable. Haven't you seen that kind of 
Christian often ? And that is one reason, dearly 
beloved brethren, why some men do not like 
Christianity. They say, " This is a bitter, dark 
kind of religion." 

Again, many Christian men would like to go 
in the way of sinners. Their conduct shows 
that they envy sinners. Such a Christian man 
says, " Here I am, going to the sanctuary 
every Sunday, fasting on Fridays, giving a por- 
tion of my goods to the poor; here I am, deny- 
ing myself and taking up my cross, and here are 
these sinners of the market, these sinners of the 
ballroom and the theatre — their eyes stand out 
with fatness, they have more than heart could 
wish, they are thriving in all their business and 
pleasure." Men of this temper sit down in the 
church of God and are envious ! Being children, 
elder brothers in their Father's house, they are 
envious of the joys that sinners have ! Oh ! my 
Christian friends, why should you envy sinners? 
Why should you, as the Psalmist says, "be en- 
vious of evil-doers?" Instead of being jealous, 
for charity's sake let them have a little joy, for 
consider the darkness and bitterness that are to 
come after. 

But in this case there was an additional thing 
against the brother. Joy on this occasion was 
natural and wholesome. They ought to have 
had music in the father's house when this son 
who had been lost was found again. It was 
right. It was ordered by the father. And just 
while they were rejoicing over the son that had 
come back, the elder brother was angry and 
would not go in. 

3. There is a third thing in the young man 
that ought to be noticed. All along he had 
been unloving to his brother. 

I want to call the attention of you who are 
Christian people — for I am speaking now to 
" good " people, and not to prodigals — to the 
absolute necessity of being humane if you are 
Christian, and the certainty, if you are not hu- 
mane, that you are not Christian. The world 
looks in upon the Church and says, "Behold 
these professors of religion ; there is many a 
man in the common walks of life more chari- 
table, more humane, with a greater chord of ten- 
derness in his heart than these people." And 
they tell the truth, and you know it. There is 



the great argument of the apostle John : " If 
you do not love your brother whom you have 
seen, how can you love God whom you have not 
seen ? " 1 John, iv. 20. If that poor fallen wo- 
man, having flesh and blood like your wife, your 
daughter, your mother, does not stir your heart 
with tenderness, and pity, and Christian affec- 
tion, how can you love God whom you have 
never seen ? I appeal to you, my dear friends, 
on this ground very earnestly. Mark that this 
elder son, when he was speaking to his father, 
speaking of his own and only brother, instead 
of saying, " When this my brother returns," 
called him " this thy son / " Never in this narra- 
tive does it appear that the word 1 ' brother " was 
upon his lips. Put this to your hearts and con- 
sciences, you fine, you well-to-do men, you de- 
cent Christian people; have you never felt, when 
you have looked upon the outcast and the sin- 
ner, " Yes, I suppose, somehow, distantly, he is 
my brother?" You have come upon the rela- 
tionship by going around through God, and 
making the road as long as you pleased, saying, 
"Yes, I suppose he is a child of God, and there- 
fore he is my brother," but you feel that there is 
a great distance between you and this unwashed 
sinner of the Five Points. 

Do we not remind ourselves of this elder son ? 
He did not rush in and seize his returning brother 
in loving embraces and cover him with kisses, 
as you and I know he ought to have done. If 
he had, no doubt the poor prodigal would have 
shrunk back from his decent and nice brother, 
and said, " I am not fit to be embraced by you ! " 
If he had done so, we know what it would have 
been proper for the elder brother to have said. 
If he had been good, he would have replied, 
" Don't say so, my darling, my only brother. 
The house has been so lonely since you went. 
Recollect our childhood, how we played together, 
showing our toys and good things ! Recollect 
how many plans we have formed together. You 
are my brother, my only brother. I don't care 
where you've been, now that you have come 
back again." That is what he should have felt 
and said. But he was not sorry when his 
brother left, nor glad when he returned. 

How is it with you, sir, you that have been so 
long in the Church of God ? Does it strike you 
with pain when some one wanders away from 
the Father's house ? It is to be feared there are 
Christian people by the thousands in this city 
who are contented and quiet, while their brothers 
and sisters by the tens of thousands are going 
to destruction. Then there are Christian men 
and women that have comfort and prosperity, 



270 



The Elder Brother. 



and everything right in the bank, who are far 
from rejoicing when some poor prodigal returns. 
Perhaps I am addressing some such man now, 
who would feel that it were inconvenient if, some 
evening, when friends were assembled in a gay 
and festive party at his elegant home, a poor 
man should ring the bell, and forcing his way- 
past the servants to the master of the house, 
should say, "I understand that you are a Chris- 
tian. I saw you at prayer-meeting last Wednesday 
night " — stop ! I shall have to change my figure. 
Such Christians as these are almost never seen 
in a prayer-meeting — or suppose that he had 
seen you partake of the Sacrament of the Lord's 
Supper, or somehow or other he had discovered 
that you are a professing Christian, and should 
say, " All last night long and all this day I have 
been in the midst of troubles and terrors. I am 
a stranger in a strange land. I do not know a 
single soul in this great city, but I believe yc^u 
to be a Christian. I have come to you for a few 
minutes to ask you to tell me the way of salva- 
tion." Would you not think it a painful inter- 
ruption ? I am afraid you would say: "Just 
come to-morrow. I have invited a large com- 
pany here, and there are some of the most ele- 
gant people in the city in my house, and I can- 
not attend to you to-night." On your honor, 
would you not feel sorry that this man had had 
that conviction, and had come to you to talk 
with him ? Then yozi are that elder brother. 

Why, if he had been the right kind of a bro- 
ther, and had seen the younger son going astray, 
he would, some evening, have said to him : 
" Come, brother, let me sleep with you to-night ; 
I feel that I should like to lie in your arms again, 
just as when we were little boys." And then, 
when the night was on them, he would have 
gone over his life and say: "Brother, do you 
not recollect such and such things of our dead 
mother?" And those old scenes would have 
been brought up and talked over, and then the 
boy would have been melted. And then the 
elder would have told the younger many sweet 
things his father had said of him, and have 
assured him of the father's love. And when the 
boy went to his father and said : " Give me that 
portion that belongs to me," the brother would 
have used persuasives to detain him ; and when 
he started out in the road his brother would have 
put the best horse before the best carriage and 
gone after him and said: "Come back, dear 
brother, I will give you half of the remainder of 
the estate ; come back, I will give you all." But 
he never placed one single straw of influence in 
the way of that brother to keep him from going 



away from his father's house, even as our 
brothers stray away from God, because we 
do not try to keep them in the family. 

And when the prodigal came back there was 
no rejoicing in the elder brother's heart. He 
ought to have known, when he saw the light in 
his father's house, and heard the rejoicing and 
dancing, that there was something good going 
on; but, instead of entering promptly, he sent 
for the servant to come out, and asked about 
this thing, and when he heard what the rejoicing 
was for he was angry, and would not go in. 

Ah ! my friends, Christianity — Christ's blessed 
Christianity — will never take this world until it 
beget in Christians a love for all their human 
kith and kin — until humanity be a precious 
thing in our sight, and the bond of all human- 
ity be recognized by us. 

There is a little poem of Leigh Hunt's, — a 
little poem that is worth all the things that have 
been written in the Edinburgh Review from the 
first number down to the present time, and will 
be remembered when all the great articles of the 
great writers in that famous periodical shall be 
forgotten. It will do me good to repeat them : 

(i Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase) 
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, 
And saw within the moonlight in his room, 
Making it rich and like a lily in bloom, 
An angel writing in a book of gold ; 
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold, 
And to the presence in the room he said, 
4 What writest thou ? ' The vision raised its head. 
And, with a look made of all sweet accord, 
Answered, 'The names of those who love the Lord.' 
' And is mine one ? ' said Abou. 4 Nay, not so,' 
Keplied the angel. Abou spake more low, 
But cheerily still, and said : ' I pray thee, then, 
"Write me as one that loves his fellow-men.' 
The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night 
It came again with a great wakening light, 
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed, 
And, lo ! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest." 

That is the humanity of the Gospel. Peace 
to the memory of Leigh Hunt forever and ever ! 
These are lines that shall live while there is a 
fibre of brotherhood in any human heart. 

4. But this man was not only destitute of love 
to his brother ; he was a slanderer. 

It is very easy to speak badly of those we do 
not love, and we love so few people that most 
of us are slanderers of the majority of the people 
with whom we are acquainted. Have you stop- 
ped to think of that? There are very few who 
can say, " I have never spoken ill of man or 



The Elder Brother. 



271 



woman." This wicked elder brother said : 
"When this thy son that has spent thy goods 
with harlots was come." He knew that this 
was a frightful stain on one's manhood, a terrible 
thing for a brother. to say about his brother, and 
to their common father. It was an audacious 
slander. How did he know that his brother had 
ever been in such scenes as these he depicts? 
I will tell you how this wicked brother came by 
the fancy. He knew that if he could once slip 
the noose of his father's control, and go into a 
new country, he would enter such scenes as he 
painted, and that he would do that which he 
charged upon his brother. The*voice of his own 
evil nature he mistook for the voice of humanity. 
Friends, whenever on suspicion you make a 
statement that is adverse to the reputation of 
your fellow-man, let me tell you that everybody 
who hears you has a right to think that you 
would do just that thing if you were in such 
circumstances. 

Thus the world is perpetually slandering the 
Church, and the Church is perpetually slander- 
ing the world. The thoughtless man of the 
world says : " These men are hypocrites, they 
serve God for gain." Now that is what the devil 
said of Job, and when you say it of any man, 
you simply quote the devil's words, and you 
ought at least to give the devil credit for the 
form of the allegation. And whenever you hear a 
man say that the Church is serving God for gain, 
you may believe that if he joined the Church he 
would do it for that motive. 

And Christians say many naughty things of 
men who are just as stainless as they themselves. 
This is a terrible trick of human nature to paint 
one's own portrait and put another man's name 
under it. Supposing a painter should see an 
ugly man in the street, and call him in and take 
his portrait, and while the painter stepped out 
of the room the hideous fellow should seize the 
brush and put your name under it, you would 
think him ugly in more ways than one. 

5. The elder brother was a liar. The state- 
ments he makes are absolutely false. When 
men become excited with passion they are very 
apt to do this. This elder brother committed 
this sin thrice. He said to their father: " This 
thy son has gone and wasted thy substance." 
He had wasted substance, but it was not his 
father's. According to the law of the land the 
son was entitled to so much, and the father gave 
him just what belonged to him. And now the 
elder brother not only utters a slanderous false- 
hood of the younger, but he tells a falsehood in 
regard to himself. He says : " / have kept thy 



commandments all the time." He was profess- 
ing allegiance to his father which was not true, 
for with the very breath that he w T as uttering 
that statement he was proving his disobedience. 
It was practical disobedience not to join in the 
festivities which his father had ordered and 
arranged. And, in the third place, he made a 
false statement about his father, because he said : 
"I have done all these things, yet thou never 
gavest me a kid that I might make merry with 
my friends." Stop here, and ask what business 
that boy had with a friend that was not his 
father's friend. It is a very bad thing if a man's 
son has associates that he does not dare to bring 
in and introduce to his father. It is a terrible 
thing, allow me to say, in passing, when fathers 
make their homes so strait and so disagreeable 
that the boys cannot feel that home is home. 
This man said he never had a kid from his 
father, when his father had given him the free- 
dom of the house and the use of all that was 
therein. 

6. Moreover, this elder brother was selfish and 
mercenary. He admits unconsciously that he 
was serving his father for profit. He had done 
all these things: "And now," said he, "what 
is the net result ? Not a kid. The fatted calf 
for the prodigal, but not a kid for me." And 
thus for the kids and the calves, for the fat and 
the marrow, for the loaves and the fishes, for the 
gain and the profit, the puritan sinner is serving 
God. 

7. In the seventh place, the elder brother 
was disrespectful and disobedient to his father. 
There is hardly any crime I can conceive of so 
wicked, so demoralizing, as disrespect to parents. 
The man that is not respectful to his father 
cannot be pious toward his God. You may 
settle that now. A girl that is not respectful 
to her mother cannot have any sincere respect 
for God. It is out of nature. 

Now see this case. His father came out and 
entreated him before the son said a word. He 
did not speak harshly to him, and say roughly : 
" Why don't you come in and welcome my son ?" 
but he threw his arms around him and said : 
"Ztocomein and welcome thy brother." But 
the wicked boy threw back this entreaty, and 
said, like a master talking to his servant : " Lo ! 
these many years have I served thee, neither 
have I transgressed at any time thy law, yet thou 
never gavest me a kid that I may make merry 
with my friends; but as soon as this thy son was 
come" (as though he reflected upon him for 
being the father of such a wretch)—" as soon as 
this thy son was come, who hath devoured thy 



272 



The Elder Brother. 



living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the 
fatted calf." My friends, this is a melancholy 
picture of the elder brother, so often passed over 
carelessly. He is in the house; he is in the 
Church; and, mark, the very sin he charges 
upon his prodigal brother, that of devouring his 
substance, is the very sin the elder brother wants 
to commit now. Here was a man lost in his 
father's house. 

Lastly, this son was a hypocrite, a Pharisee, 
a puritan, a man who, under the cover of piety, 
condemned the sins of others with loud preach- 
ing, and endeavored to show the sincerity of his 
condemnation by vehement exhortations, while 
he committed these very sins in private. He is 
a puritan that is loud for total abstinence, but has 
a private closet and a secret key for his bottle. 
He is a puritan that denounces the man who 
keeps a faro-table, and himself, by sharp, shrewd 
ways, throws thousands of dollars wrongfully 
into his coffers. He is a puritan that con- 
demns, it may be, the men that are struggling 
down in Wall-street and the Gold Room, while 
he himself, on a large, fat salary, is paid for 
writing slanders of these his brethren. He is 
the Elder Brother of our modern times. 

It is a very black picture, my friends, which the 
blessed Saviour has painted with so much fidel- 
ity, as well as with so much benevolence. Bear 
with me while I strive to draw some lessons 
from it. 

The first is, that the hypocrite is worse than 
the prodigal — is more injurious to society than 
he. What kept the prodigal from returning 
keeps many a young man and many a young 
woman gone into sin, in this city, from coming 
back to God. When one of these sinners that 
are all the while surrounded with temptations 
and seductions comes back, the Pharisee stands 
at the door and holds it so tight that the poor 
fellow cannot enter. And every man who is in 
the Church, and does not join in welcoming the 
sinner, is in league to keep the poor prodigal out. 

There is a second lesson. You and I may 
fancy that we are keeping the commandments 
of God, while the absence of love and the pres- 
ence of evil principles may be in our hearts. You 
may be baptized with all the water that ever 
washed the banks of all the rivers on earth ; you 
may have had placed upon your head, day by 
day and night after night, the hands of all the men 
that have ever been ordained bishops, elders, or 
deacons of all the branches of God's Church on 
earth ; you may partake of the holy Eucharist ; 
you may fast and give goods to the poor, and 
yet, without the love of God and the love of man 



in your heart, your sacrifice will be an abomina- 
tion unto the Lord. 

Then, there is another lesson : the mask of 
the hypocrite must sometime fall. Day by day 
this hypocrite had kept his domino over his 
face, a masquerader in the house of his father ; 
but in a moment when he did not expect it, when 
he had come sauntering in from the fields — 
where, perhaps, he had been looking over the 
grounds and saying, " What an elegant estate 
I should have if the old man would only die ; he 
looks a little shaky now, and if he would only go, 
what an estate I'd have;" — suddenly, while he was 
hearing the feetrof the dancers and the notes of 
the instruments making glad music over the poor, 
humbled, returned, penitent brother, the elder son 
stood before his father an unmasked hypocrite. 

Dear brother, if you and I have not tender 
love for God and our brethren, let us be sure that, 
however long we hold the mask before our faces, 
the hour will come when it shall drop, and God 
and the world shall behold our uncovered de- 
formities. 

Again, my friends, it is possible that we may 
boast of righteousness while guilty of the lowest 
sin. Men of the world sometimes thank God 
that they are not like Christians. My uncon- 
verted friends, when you hear the parable of the 
Pharisee and the Publican, who, do you think, 
is the Pharisee? "The church-member," you 
say. And who the Publican? "Well, I reckon 
I am the Publican, or will be when I go into 
the church and, striking my hands on my 
breast, say, ' God be merciful to me a sinner.' " 
I beg your pardon, my friend. Have you not 
seen churchmen in the stock exchange, or in a 
picture gallery, or on the street, and said, " God, 
I thank thee that I am a gentleman ; I thank 
thee that I am not as other men. I thank thee 
that I do not profess what I do not believe. I 
thank thee that I am not as these hypocritical 
church-members ?" And you thought that you 
were the Publican ! And perhaps that man, who 
looked so meek, broken down, and dispirited, 
that you fancied he had the face of a hypocrite, 
was in his heart saying, " I know I am not as 
good as many men out of the Church," and 
perhaps, looking over to you, he has said, 
" And, Lord, I have heard that that sinner, who 
goes to the theatre and the gambling-house (I am 
using his own language), has made an immense 
self-sacrifice for his fellow-men, such as I have 
not had the power to make. Lord, I am not fit 
to be thy hired servant; just let me crawl into 
thy house and lie there anywhere." So griev- 
ously do we misread one another I 



The Elder Brother. 



273 



Lastly, my friends, here is, I think, the grand 
lesson of the text, so far as we are concerned, 
namely, that the root of all sin is in the belief 
that we may enjoy good out of God. Whenever 
you think there is anything in music that you 
can enjoy outside of God, you are a sinner. 
Whenever you think that in statuary, in wit, in 
poetry, in any of the arts and sciences, there is 
good that you can enjoy outside of God, and say 
to God, " Give me my substance, that I may go 
and enjoy it in my own way" — whenever you do 
that, it is a sin. And whenever in your father's 
house you say, "I wish my father would leave 
the house: I am going to invite three or four 
good fellows, and we are going to have a high 
time, and we want the key of the cellar and the 
larder;" or whenever you, my friends in the 
Church, say, " I want to have a kid and slay it 
without my Father," no matter what that kid is, 
no matter whether it be sensual pleasure or men- 
tal pleasure, if you want to enjoy it without the 
Father, you sin. 

But here is the supreme lesson as touching 
the Father. If any of you hate the puritan, as 
Christ has painted him in this parable, stop and 
consider that there was no hate in the father's 
heart. Let us go home all very humble ; for see : 
" A certain man had two sons." They were both 
his sons, and he behaved toward thern in the < 



most fatherly manner. When the prodigal came 
back he needed consolation and cordial assu- 
rances, and the father fell on his neck and kissed 
him. And when the puritan outside refused to 
come in the father went out and said : " Oh, my 
son — oh, my SON ! " Mark that tenderness. He 
has just come from inside of the house, and 
from saying, "This, my son, who was dead, is 
alive again, who was lost, is found," and he goes 
out and says to the obstinate brother : " My son, 
thou art ever with me." Is not it beautiful to see 
how tenderly God loves us ? He says these things 
to the hard-hearted brother : " It is all yours by 
inheritance — all yours by endowment, if you be 
a good boy : but if lost in your father's home, 
envious andjealous, none of these treasures can 
come to you. If you only rejoice with your 
brother, then all that I have is yours." Oh, my 
elder brother, God is not angry with you ; my 
younger brother, God is not angry with you. 

It is at the bottom and the root of all the other 
teachings of the Gospel that God is my Father, 
God is your Father, God is every man's Father, 
and that we are all brothers and sisters of this 
family of sinners that are to be saved by Christ. 
Oh, blessed be the Father that comes out to the 
prodigal and falls upon his neck ; blessed be that 
Father that comes out to the puritan and entreats 
■ ana forgives even him, even him J 



XLIV. 

fudge §0t. 

"judge not, that ye be not judged, for with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be 
judged: and with what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again. " — 

MATT. VII. I, 2. 



The blessed Saviour had been teaching the 
necessity of the cultivation of character and the 
importance of aspiring to perfection in our inner 
man. To this end He instructed his disciples in 
thorough self-searching and thorough unselfish- 
ness. By a natural transition of discourse He 
passed from the judgments we should pronounce 
upon ourselves to those we pronounce upon oth- 
ers, and this led him to announce the important 
precept of this text. 

These words certainly cannot be reasonably 
taken to mean that we are to suspend the exer- 
cise of that admirable faculty with which God 
has endowed us, by which we compare conduct 
and character with His own great standard of 
morality. There are few more improving exer- 
cises than this, for the quickening of our own 
moral sensibility and the guidance of our own 
lives. To this end the Bible furnishes us charac- 
ters for study, such as the Prodigal Son and the 
Elder Brother. 

The Great Teacher condemns the unlovely 
spirit with which many are wont to criticize the 
conduct of their fellows, to make the most unfa- 
vorable judgments of all their actions, and to 
assign to bad motives actions that may just as 
well be supposed to have sprung from motives 
that are pure and noble. In all ages of the world 
the spirit of detraction has been the curse of hu- 
man society, and in nothing is the depravity of 
humanity, and its need of a regeneration into 
healthfulness, more apparent than in this wide- 
spread and almost universal temper of unchari- 
table judging. It is not the special vice of the 
lower orders, it is the pestilence that walketh in 
darkness in the higher places of society. It is 
not specially a vice of men : charming women, 
with sweetest artfulness, are perpetually distress- 
ing society by their bitter bad judgments of their 
own sex and of ours, poisoning the arrows of 
their heart and then perfuming the poison. It 
is not specially an American vice : it pervades 
the nations. A German writer says that, when 



people speak of one another, it is so generally 
something evil that is said as to make the phrase 
" jemauden bereden " mean to "speak ill of 
one." In our own country, and among our little 
children, when one says, " Aha ! I heard some- 
body say something about you ! " it is under- 
stood at once that what was said was not pleasant. 
It is not a modern vice. The ancient satirists 
lashed it, and the ancient moralists denounced 
it. Seneca said, " You observe the pimples of 
others, yourself being covered with ulcers." Je- 
sus, in the illustration of the " mote " and the 
" beam," quotes a homely and rough proverb 
which shows how this vice prevailed among his 
countrymen. 

The lesson he endeavors to teach seems to 
comprise the following particulars : 

1. Judge not, As far as your duty will allow 
you, abstain from forming a condemnatory opin- 
ion of your fellow-men, for the word seems not 
simply to mean an opinion but an adverse opin- 
ion. Our duty will frequently enough compel 
us to examine the conduct of our fellows and to 
form judgments thereupon. We are not to as- 
sume the functions of a judge officiously and go 
out of our way to fetch cases into the court on 
whose bench we sit. There are people who 
seem to act as if they felt that their mission into 
the world was to ferret out culprits and bring 
them to speedy and violent judgment. They 
are born constables and judges. They become 
morbidly judicial. The duty of every Christian 
is, as far as practicable, to avoid judgment in every 
case, and to form judgment only when duty and 
love compel. He will soon find enough to do 
in that department. 

2. We certainly are in every case to avoid 
forming opinions upon any man's conduct and 
character until we have the whole body of evi- 
dence upon which such an opinion should be 
based. It is mere presumption to decide upon 
cases in which we have little or no knowledge ; 
and if every man will resolutely suspend judg- 



Judge Not. 



275 



ment until he become thoroughly satisfied that 
he is not presuming to decide upon a question 
far beyond his capabilities, perhaps nine hun- 
dred and ninety-nine of a thousand judgments 1 
now pronounced would be kept in abeyance. In 
smaller matters we do observe this rule. A man 
who has had no musical culture and does not 
know one note from another, will not pretend to 
decide upon the merits of a new oratorio, how- 
ever great a painter, sculptor, or poet he may be. 
But in the higher, more important, and more 
difficult work of detecting motives, and analyzing 
them, every bungler seems to feel at liberty to 
make up his opinion and express it as that from 
which there could be no appeal. 

3. We are to be charitable in our judgments 
when we are compelled to form them. In every 
case there is some doubt. That chasm of doubt 
should be filled with charity and not severity. 
The action will have a good appearance or a bad. 
If the latter, we are to consider whether the evil 
may not be in the appearance alone : if the for- 
mer, there must be the most violent and irre- 
sistible evidence to make us believe that what 
seems so good in act comes from a really bad 
soul. It is a terrible thing that we find in socie- 
ty — people admitting, as they are bound to ad- 
mit, that such and such actions are beautiful or 
sublime, "but he had some selfish motive in 
doing it." Perhaps some merchant-prince pro- 
jects and builds a free gallery of art or a grand 
hotel, or asylum for women, and forthwith some 
are found who are ready to say, " O yes, a very 
good advertisement for his great business." Ma- 
lignity can go no farther than to intimate that 
the sentiments of hell are written in the star-lan- 
guage of heaven. 

4. Nor must our judgment of our fellow-men 
he partial. We are not to condemn in one what 
we allow in another. Thus, before you finally 
utter condemnation of another person's child, 
stop a few minutes to consider just what judg- 
ment you would pass upon your own child, if 
that son or daughter had done the condemned 
thing. It will not change the character of the 
act, for wrong is wrong, and right is right, no 
matter whether done by your child or mine; 
but it will suspend my judgment, and will assist 
me to come to right views, if I have regard to 
the manner in which the thing would strike me 
if done at home. Especially is it most unbecom- 
ing to condemn in others what we allow in our- 
selves. In that case it is most obvious that 
what we condemn is not the wrong of the act, 
but the person of the wrong-doer. If I blame 
another for such things as I do, then really I am I 



only blaming him for not being myself, which is 
absurd. 

These, dear brethren, seem to me to be the 
characteristics of that kind of judgment which 
our Lord Jesus condemns, and which is so hurt- 
ful to the sweetness and wholesomeness of the 
community. To dissuade you from all unchar- 
itableness, if you have fallen thereinto, and to as- 
sist you in resisting every temptation to conduct 
so injurious to your dignity and to the peace 
and commonwealth of the Church and of socie- 
ty, allow me to present a few reasons why we 
should not make uncharitable judgments of our 
fellow-men. 

The first reason is, that it is almost impossible 
to see the whole of any action performed by our 
fellow-men, especially in comiection with the 
circit7iislances. 

The material objects about us can be known 
only by going on every side and examining every 
part. You never can see a whole tree at a time. 
You must go all around the trunk and turn every 
branch and sprig and leaf, and unearth every 
root and rootlet, before you can be said to have 
seen the tree. And what one man can do all 
this ? And so it happens that quarrels fall out 
among men because each affirms most positively 
of the whole what he certainly knows to be true 
only of a part. And so it happens that asser- 
tions that seem absolutely opposite and even 
contradictory are both true. But if a man as- 
sume that only that proposition which he is able 
to make touching any subject is true, and all 
others must be false, he will be perpetually mis- 
judging his fellow-men. This is illustrated by 
the old story of the quarrel and fight between 
two men on the question of the color of a shield, 
in which it was discovered, after blood had been 
spilled, that both were right, that the shield was 
white and was blue, being white upon one side 
and blue on the other. 

If this be true of material objects, how much 
more of actions which include bodies and forces 
and the results of motion ? If there be a single 
person engaged in the action it will be impossi- 
ble to see all his connections, what is under his 
feet and what behind him, to know all that he is 
doing at the same moment ; so that, ordinarily, 
we can judge only of a part of an action. If 
there be two persons, our attention is necessarily 
distracted, being turned from one party to the 
other, and from both to the action, and from the 
action to the result. And the larger the number 
in the party the more difficult to judge. Did 
you ever know any two men engaged in an im- 
i portant action, such, for instance, as an important 



276 



Judge JVot. 



battle, who were satisfied with any one account, 
whether written by one of the actors or by a 
spectator? Did you ever know any man so 
acute in observing, so sagacious in comprehend- 
ing, so honest and lucid in narrating, that he 
could give an account of a street-fight, on his 
oath, before a court, so that his statement would 
not be modified by that of a man equally acute, 
sagacious, and honest, who saw the affair from 
a window on the opposite side of a street? It is 
said of an author who was engaged upon the 
history of a preceding age, that he was inter- 
rupted by a brawl under his windows, and that, 
after having witnessed the whole transaction, he 
was visited by three impartial, sensible, and 
learned gentlemen, each of whom gave his own 
account of the affair, which so differed from the 
author's view of the case, and so differed one from 
another, that he threw down his work in despair, 
saying, " If a man cannot give a full and fair 
narrative of what occurs under his very eyes, 
within a few yards of him, how can he deal fairly 
with the actions of dead men, for an account of 
which he must rely upon the statements of dead 
witnesses ? " 

The second reason is, that we cannot know the 
motive. 

There is a species of knowledge called the 
knowledge of human nature. It is supposed to 
include the capability of deciding a man's mo- 
tives from his actions. This must be acquired 
in two ways : first by studying the connection 
between our own actions and what we believe to 
be our motives, — and the connection between 
the known actions and t,he acknowledged mo- 
tives of our fellow-men. Very much valuable 
and painful knowledge can be thus obtained, 
but it seems quite obvious that it must be far 
from accurate, for two reasons: in the first place, 
we may misjudge our own motives, for want of 
skill in detecting and want of honesty in assign- 
ing the right reason ; and, in the second place, 
the same unskillfulness and misguiding self-love 
exist in our fellow-men. So this " knowledge 
of human nature" must be acknowledged, as yet, 
very far from being one of the exact sciences. 

And then, we must have frequently discerned 
^hat the same outward act in two cases has 
sprung from motives as diverse as possible. A 
motion of politeness may be performed, in one 
case, from motives of genuine benevolence, and 
for the purpose of diminishing the friction of 
society and increasing the sum of human happi- 
ness ; while, in another, it may be merely the 
result of habit, or a part of a series of cunning 
diplomatic movements, or the mask to hide 



malice, that would make a betrayal with a kiss. 
Does one man in a thousand really know the 
most influential motive for one in a thousand 
of all his own actions f If we have this difficulty 
with the motives swaying the soul that is in us, 
it should at least make us modest in pronounc- 
ing positively as to those which move the unseen 
inner man of our neighbor. 

That the same conduct may be the product 
of different classes of motives is constantly illus- 
trated in human intercourse and history. Young 
men have noticed two fellow-students or fellow- 
clerks who seemed reserved and niggardly, and 
never joining in any pleasures that involved 
expense. Now, it is clear that there may be a 
difference of motive. In college the one may 
be a churl, disliking good-fellowship, or he may 
be a young miser, determined to be rich, and 
beginning methods of meanness which he sup- 
poses may help him to attain that end : the 
other maybe supported by the daily and nightly 
toil of a maiden sister, whose needle is plied for 
him, whose life is straitened for him, a sister 
who never puts a superfluous ribbon on her 
bonnet, never buys a new bonnet while the old 
hat can be worn, never glorifies her humble 
chamber with the coveted beauty and fragrance 
of a bouquet, who is making all womanly sacri- 
fices that her brother may have his costly text- 
books, his respectable place in college, and his 
glorious career before the country. The young 
student is too sensitive to make known the beau- 
tiful reason of his seeming stinginess, and he is 
too much a gentleman, Heaven bless him ! to 
squander the hard earnings of the loving sister's 
weary hands ; and so he must go forward endur- 
ing the hard judgment of his fellows. 

Let me tell you the short and simple story of 
a young clerk down town who is despised by 
several employes of his house. He has a 
moderate salary, but such as would seem to 
justify a more liberal mode of life. He has the 
cheapest lodgings that can be called decent. 
He lives on the European plan, which often 
means two meals a day on less than half a 
dollar. He never goes to a place of amusement. 
He never rides in carriages and seldom in street- 
cars. He does not accept invitations to be made 
acquainted with the lady-friends of his comrades, 
and this is a prodigious sacrifice, as there are 
few such delights in life to him as the society of 
good women. But in the case of every gentle- 
man it must involve increased expense. He 
never wears gloves, nor owns a cane. He never 
buys a book or a newspaper. His life on the 
superficies is flatly mean. And he is despised 



Judge Not. 



277 



therefore. But he is quietly cheerful. That is 
what the few in New York who know him see 
in him. 

But there is a bright lady a little past fifty, 
frail, and, by reason of early sorrows, looking 
to be seventy years of age, living off in a far 
country village, and she has one of the tidiest 
of cottages, and therein leads a patient, serene 
life, and goes to the church on Sunday in her 
nice black-silk gown, her white hair smoothed 
in front of her spotless cap, and she has all corn- 
forts and all respect, and every week of her life, 
on Friday, she receives a letter from her " dar- 
ling Will " in New York, and they are the 
cheeriest letters, and every few weeks they con- 
tain a remittance from her dear boy, so that 
"the lot" is kept up, and flowers are planted, 
and the milch cow is thriving, and she does not 
quite know what to do with the money, but 
"Will" says that he is "doing so well," and 
that he has more than he needs, and therefore 
sends it to his mother; and all the good people 
in the village honor her all the more because 
she is the mother of so good a boy. That same 
Will is the despised and stingy young clerk just 
described, and the reason of his cheerfulness is 
that he knows what his mother is enjoying, and 
next month his employer will send him on busi- 
ness to his native State, and grant him a vaca- 
tion of a fortnight to be spent amid all the sooth- 
ing delights of that dear little home, and under 
the satisfied smile of that dear and proud little 
mother. 

If we knew the motive, how often would acts 
seem sublime that now we are so ready to pro- 
nounce mean and pitiful ! 

A third reason against severe judgments is, 
that we do ?iot know all the ajitecedents of the 
individual and of his acts. 

A man is the sum-total of all his ancestors ; 
he is the result out of multiform and complex 
generations. This composite creature is com- 
pelled to bring to all the labors of life and the 
problems of existence' his myriadly-modified 
physical and intellectual nature. Then think 
of the nearest ancestors a man may have had — 
what a father, what a mother ! Think of the 
kennel in which he may have drawn his first 
breath. Go into one of the horrible tenement- 
houses of this city, into the slums of cellars and 
plague-nests of garrets, and look on the pitiful 
new-born little wailer lying in filth and vermin 
beside the mother that has not had a good 
nutritious meal for a year before its birth. Just 
out of such a pit may have come the man you 
are so ready to condemn. His father may have 



been brutal and his mother weak. The home 
of his boyhood may have been darkened by 
suffering and made lurid by raging passion. He 
may not have had a pleasant word uttered nor a 
pleasant look given him in all his earliest child- 
hood, while your infancy may have been lapped 
in deliciousness and fed on smiles. Everything 
that could conspire to make a man a hater of 
his kind may have been poured into his life. 
Do not judge him until you know his antecedents. 

Nor can one judge a single act until one 
knows what went before, what brought it on, or 
what gave it an occasion to be, or what seemed 
to the actor the sufficient and compelling reason 
why it should be. Actions are not solitary. 
They all have their connections. Given a cer- 
tain series of antecedents, and a certain action 
is right ; change the antecedents, and the action 
will be wrong. Now, who are you that you 
should set yourself to be a severe judge of a 
fellow-creature when you cannot know what 
antecedent elements made him just so liable to 
certain influences, nor the chain of events which 
brought just such influences to bear on him and 
produce results he will probably deprecate more 
than you can ? 

And, fourthly, you will do well before you 
utter a harsh judgment to consider that you do 
not know how much the man resisted before per- 
forming the act you are so swift to condemn. 

What network of temptation may have been 
formed about the victim, how steadily one end 
of the plane on which he is sliding has been 
lifted, how skillfully the parallels were made 
which enabled the enemy to approach and as- 
sault his citadel, how long and bravely and ago- 
nizingly he fought before he fell or yielded — 
these things you cannot know ! You see a 
gashed and smoke-grimed corpse crushed into 
the mud by the tramp of the flying cavalry and 
the wheels of the retreating artillery, but do not 
know how full of grandest heroism was that poor 
conquered and killed man, before he died. And 
so on the social battle-field, before a man de- 
serts his party, or flies, or falls, think of the long, 
hard fight he may have made. Could you have 
held out so long as your frail sister did, if the 
terrible hand which pushed her forward had 
been at your back, if the powerful seductions 
which drew her forward had been presented to 
you? The path of human life is not so entirely 
plain that men may not be lost in striving to 
find the right end — men who are not willingly 
lost ! When you weigh one portion of the life 
against the other, perhaps you will suspend your 
hard judgments. 



078 



Judge JVot. 



There is still another reason dissuasive from 
severity of judgment. It is in a consideration 
of our own limited ability to judge. 

Supposing all the facts to be presented, the 
act in all parts and bearings, the motive, the 
antecedents in the formation of the man's char- 
acter and action, and the amount of resistance 
he had presented to the temptation, there still 
remains the finiteness of our nature, the narrow- 
ness of capability in the broadest intellects and 
in the most generous spirits, that should make 
one careful of pronouncing a positive opinion. 
This is shown us by two notorious facts in the 
history of the intellect — its liability to judge 
solely by appearance ; and the effect of prejudice. 
It is the supreme triumph of the mind when it 
can ascend through the phenomena to the nou- 
meno7i, as the Greeks called it, to that essence 
which is the real soul of what the eye sees. But 
who can do this ? and how often ? And so we 
come to have the easy habit of basing our judge- 
ment upon what we see and judging by appear- 
ances. But the slightest shifting of the position 
of the observer changes the whole aspect, and 
consequently the whole impression. 

We say that photographs give exact types. 
But let the artist photograph a town from any 
position, and then let him take his instrument 
ten rods to the east or west and ten yards higher 
up on a hill, and the two pictures will not be re- 
cognized as of the same town except by those 
who have often looked upon it from the two 
several standpoints. See the effect of light upon 
statuary and painting and upon human beings. 
When light is flung up on a face it gives rather 
a grotesque effect, but if flung down, a very 
solemn effect. How different the face of your 
mother when you looked down upon it from 
your high chair and when you looked up from 
her lap. If you had never seen a clergyman 
except from a particular seat in a high gallery, 
and then should see him rise above you as you 
sat in the pew on the lower floor, you would 
probably not be able to recognize him. It is 
just so with actions, it is just so with motives, it 
is just so with character. The lights, the shades, 
the positions, all have powerful modifications, 
and our faculties are so narrow that we cannot 
strip the effects of these modifications away. 

And then, our judgments are apt to be affect- 
ed by our pre-judgments, our prejudices. We 
like a man for any cause ; all that is said against 
him we account as nothing. But if we dislike 
him, all praise goes equally for nothing. We 
form an adverse judgment of a man's character 
from common report or from some incident in 



his life. We are ready to believe that he has an 
execrable appearance. The painters all make 
Judas Iscariot hideous, whereas the probability 
is that he was as much better a looking man 
than Peter as an average gambler or member 
of the General Assembly of this commonwealth 
is better looking than the average profane speci- 
mens of Nantucket fishermen. 

Some years ago, in one of our western cities, 
a band of conspirators against a railroad, having 
through spite committed the devilish act of 
throwing a train from the track, and killing and 
wounding a number of innocent passengers, 
were brought to trial. A simple-hearted visitor 
to the court asked a bystander to indicate the 
conspirators. The wag, seeing the simplicity 
of the questioner, pointed him to the jury, which 
happened to consist of twelve of the most re- 
spectable and responsible gentlemen in that city. 
Scrutinizing them awhile, he said, " Well, if I 
had to pick the rascals out of all this crowd, 
there's just the twelve men I should choose. 1 '' 

The late Mr. James T. Brady was accustomed 
to tell a story which illustrates what I am now 
saying. In the furor of the " Know-Nothing " 
excitement, perhaps you will recollect that a man 
by the name of Baker killed a man named Poole. 
Poole died saying, "I am an American citizen." 
He became, as worse men have, a lamented 
martyr, and twenty thousand men marched in 
solemn procession to his grave. The public 
feeling against Baker was almost ferocious. Mr. 
Brady defended him. After two trials a change 
of venue was obtained, and the case removed to 
Newburgh. Judge and sheriff, counsel and pri- 
soner, all went up by rail to Fishkill. The vil- 
lage was thronged. Thousands exhibited signs 
of that strange and morbid desire men have to 
see a criminal. As they passed to the boat to 
cross to Newburgh, the judge, Hon. Charles A. 
Peabody, happened to take the arm of the high- 
sheriff. A man in the crowd recognized the 
sheriff and pointed him out to the multitude, 
who concluded that of course the man at his 
arm was the accused, and agreed with a voice 
in the crowd that said, "Don't you see his 
cursed blood-thirsty face!" "They fancied," 
as Mr. Brady said, " that they saw all the linea- 
ments of a brutal murderer in the calm, bland 
features of his honor." So necessary is the 
admirable precept of our Lord and Master, 
"Judge not by appearance, but judge righteous 
judgment." 

And still there are other reasons, such as this : 
Severity of judgment has a tendency to make 
such judges hypocrites. 



Judge 



A man will pretend to have kind motives, 
whereas no man who utters an unnecessarily 
severe judgment of his fellow-man can feel 
kindly toward him. The most ruinous things 
are said in society in the softest tones, and sur- 
rounded by phrases of great compassion. But 
it is all a pretence. "Poor fellow!" "I am 
sorry it is so !" But you do not pity him, and 
do not know that it is so. Jesus presents a 
satirical picture of such a man. He goes to a 
brother who has a splinter in his eye, and he 
says tenderly, " Let me pull out the mote out of 
thine eye." But he is a hypocrite. There is a 
beam in his own eye. He is foolish. How can 
he, with a log of wood in his own eye, see how to 
perform the surgical operation of extracting the 
splinter from his brother's eye? And this shows 
the uselessness of all such judgments. If charity 
begins at home, so should judgment. Wash 
your own hands before you point out the soiled 
hands of your fellows. " Let him that is with- 
out sin among you cast the first stone at her !" 
said the wise and tender Saviour to the hypo- 
crites that brought the frail woman to him. 
And they all slunk away. If this rule should 
certainly and suddenly become universal in 
society, would any one ever be hit again ? 

Be influenced also by this consideration : you 
yourselves have often been misjudged. Was it 
not hard to bear? Was it not painful to have 
your motives suspected ? To the conscience of 
every man in this church I put the question 
whether he has not, at some period of his life, 
been in such a position or pursuing such a 
course of conduct as, if he had seen the same in 
another, in even his very dearest friend, he 
would have vehemently condemned it, and yet 
he knew circumstances and had a course of rea- 
soning that justified the whole procedure to 
himself. He has passed on in society and no 
one been injured. If any man had beheld him 
he could not have made explanations, for the 
appearances were all against him. There seems 
to me no case more painful than to be accused of 
a wrong, and all the evidence being against the 
accused while the man is innocent, but is caught 
in just such a strait that he cannot make his 
innocency good. It must be a fearful thing to 
stand on the scaffold and look farewell to earth, 
and sky, and wife, and child, and go down to 
the grave in ignominy, with the consciousness 
of innocency under the painful fate of not having 
command of the evidence which would wash 
the dark stain from one's history. Be careful 
that you lay no such load on any human heart. 
If others misjudge you, make no reprisals ; but, 



JVot. 279 



by the sweet charitableness of your judgments, 
promote in society a better temper and a better 
tone. 

Once more : // improves one's own charade? 
and increases one's own happiness to form the 
habit of making the more charitable judgment. 

There may be a better, as there may be a 
worse, reason for a man's conduct. Suppose we 
make a mistake : if it be on the gentle side, we 
are all the better and all the happier; if on the 
severe side, we are more pained and have done 
a fellow-man great injustice. There are people 
(and they do not seem to be stupidly lacking in 
discrimination) who are all the while intent upon 
taking events by the smooth handle, who are 
detectives of good, hunting down hidden good 
motives, explaining dark passages, disengaging 
tangles, untying ugly knots, pioneers in the 
territory of Eden, explorers of paths out of the 
wilderness into the garden of God, beautiful 
engineers who are grading a road for the halt 
and weak, men and women whose minds and 
hearts drive cold and darkness out of every 
case by pouring in light and warmth. If you 
want to know what manner of spirit a man is of, 
listen to his judgments of his fellow-men. He 
that thinks the world is settled by a population 
of rogues, of whom not one is honest, is he not 
himself a rogue ? What woman denounces her 
whole sex until she has totally lost her virtue ? 
If it be true, as has been said, that we find in 
works of art what we bring to them, it is emi- 
nently true of our judgment of men and their 
character and actions. 

Lastly, be moved against uncharitable judg- 
ments by the solemn reason assigned by our 
Lord : ' i For with what judgment ye judge, ye 
shall be judged : and with what measure ye 
mete, it shall be measured to you again." 

God is judge. To judge one's fellow-men is 
to assume His prerogative. Your judgments 
will be reviewed by the Searcher of all hearts. 
The great Teacher does not mean that if you are 
lenient to the faults of others, God will therefore 
be lenient to you — that if you lose the distinction 
of right and wrong toward your fellow-men, 
God will therefore obliterate that grand distinc- 
tion in His own mind. But He does mean that 
our judgments of others are to be the materials 
upon which man may and God will make up 
judgment in our own cases ; not that the only 
test of our characters will be the judgment we 
have of the character °f others, but that it will 
be one of the surest of such tescs. Our decisions 
are not final. They do not touch our fellow- 
men as that from which there is no appeal, but 



280 



Judge Not. 



if they have been unjust and unnecessarily se- 
vere, they come back in condemnation on our 
own souls. 

Surveying, then, our own weaknesses, and the 
perils of our fellow-men, and the final review of 
all things, and regarding judgment as the dread 
function of the tremendous God, let us lay 
aside our severity and descend from the judg- 
ment-seat we have usurped, and mingle with the 
great mass of our fellow-men, our fellow-suffer- 
ers, our fellow-transgressors, and falling at the 
feet of Him who is infinitely just because He is 
infinitely merciful, and infinitely merciful be- 
cause He is infinitely just, let us fling ourselves 
upon His divine compassion, crying, "God be 
merciful to m sinners / " 

Perhaps I cannot better close this appeal than 
by quoting a few lines from poor Burns, much 
of whose writings must fly away as chaff when 
much shall remain as the very best expression of 
high humanity. In the very poem from which i 



quote are words I should not care to have written, 
but I trust that there is not a heart here to-day 
that will not throb in generous response to 
these most generous, wise, and Christian lines : 

" Then gently scan your brother-man, 
Still gentler sister-woman ; 
Though they may gang a kennin wrang, 
To step aside is human. 

One point must still be greatly dark, 

The moving ivhy they do it ; 
And just as lamely can ye mark 

How far perhaps they rue it. 

Who made the heart, 'tis He alone 

Decidedly can try us, 
He knows each chord its various tone, 

Each string its various bias. 

Then, at the balance let's be mute, 

We never can adjust it; 
What's done we partly may compute, 

But know not what's resisted / " 



XLV. 
§0t f*t 



"thus speaketh the lord of hosts, saying, this people say, the time is not come, the 
time that the lord's house should be built. " haggai, i. 2. 



The history of this case is this : 

The Jews had been carried away into Babylon 
as captives, their city having been sacked and 
their civil and religious polity totally suspended. 
In that captivity they lacked the moral influence 
of the prophets. Those extraordinary messen- 
gers, which God had vouchsafed to them and 
their fathers from time to time, came no more 
amongst them. 

It was not until about eighteen years after 
their return to the Holy Land that God sent 
such men as Haggai and Zechariah to rekindle 
the flames of zeal and holy effort. The Baby- 
lonish captivity had been terminated by the 
overthrow of Babylon by the Persian, Cyrus, 
who, on coming to full possession of the empire, 
published a decree setting the Jewish people 
free, permitting them to return to their own 
country, and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. 
He sent with them many of the sacred vessels 
which Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, had 
brought out of the temple in Jerusalem, and 
placed in the temple of his god Bel. Cyrus, 
furthermore, issued letters recommending the 
governors of the various provinces to render the 
Jews assistance in rebuilding their city and their 
Holy House. It is said that 50,000 people took 
advantage of this decree to assemble at Jerusa- 
lem. 

Under the leadership of Zerubbabel, who was 
of the royal family, and of Joshua, who was of 
the priestly family, the good work began. They 
reinstituted their feasts. They put up a tempo- 
rary altar. They made great collections of money 
and great outlay to bring together the requisite 
stones and timbers. In the second year they 
laid the foundation of the Temple with great 
pomp, the apparelled priests with trumpets and 
the Levites with cymbals leading the people in 
their songs and shouts. 

But all things did not go forward swimmingly. 
Enemies arose, jealous neighbors who were 
ready to obstruct their work, who, although 



they could not annul the decree of Cyrus, could 
weaken the hands and frustrate the purposes of 
the people of Judah. This they did through the 
whole reign of Cyrus, in which the work went 
on slowly, and they obtained from his successor 
authority to suspend the rebuilding, and from 
the next king, who was a usurper, a total prohi- 
bition. That prohibition expired with the death 
of the usurper. 

Then arose Haggai and Zechariah, urging the 
people to resume the work. But they had be- 
come so engrossed in their own affairs, and had 
become so apathetic toward religion and the 
Temple, that these zealous prophets had great 
difficulty in bringing them around to their duty. 
Although Darius, the son-in-law of Cyrus, and 
now occupying the throne, had issued another 
decree, confirming the favorable edict of Cyrus, 
and giving the Jews large encouragement and 
help, they made divers excuses for their lack of 
devotion. They had begun to discover arith- 
metical pretexts for their postponement. It was 
not yet time to build the Lord's House. The 
prophet Jeremiah had predicted that it would be 
seventy years from the destruction of the Temple 
to the time it should be rebuilt : so they inter- 
preted the prophecy in which Jeremiah had said, 
" This whole land shall be a desolation and an 
astonishment ; and these nations shall serve the 
king of Babylon seventy years." 

In our time we have had abundant illustrations 
of the folly of attempting to settle future events 
by the slate. It was a plain duty which the 
prophets urged upon these Jews, and they hid 
themselves behind an arithmetical calculation. 

In reading the history of this case how forcibly 
there comes to us the conviction, that the cause 
of God, in all ages, suffers more from its professed 
friends than from its open foes. It will always 
have foes, it has them now, it always has had. 
When the Samaritans and other enemies arose 
against the rebuilding, they would have availed 
little if the people had stood to their work, 



982 



JVot Yet. 



and had put forth their intellects to defeat 
the intrigue of the enemy at the court of the 
king. It was the selfishness, sloth, carelessness, 
and apathy of the Jews which caused the work 
to cease after the foundation had been laid. So 
it is now. All the outlay of brains and money 
which the enemies of Christianity make would 
avail little against its progress if all its professed 
friends were consistent and devoted ; if men were 
as intent to be in their places in the church as 
they are to be in their places in the store ; if the 
men of great business talents were as punctual 
at the meeting of Church Committees as they 
are at their appointments in a Bank or a Cham- 
ber of Commerce ; if all the women were as de- 
voted to the cause of the Saviour in their domes- 
tic and social circles as they are to their personal 
comfort and beauty, and to etiquette. 

That it may come home to us let us look at 
these things. During the past year it rained on 
one Sunday, and some of us, who are hale 1 / 
hearty men, some of us who are young men, 
were absent from God's House. The weather 
was unfavorable. It rained just as hard on Mon- 
day morning, but somehow we all managed to 
be at our stores, at our banks, in our offices. 
Do you recollect how it rained on Tuesday night ? 
But a friend of ours was married that night, and 
we were invited. We all hired carriages to take 
our wives and daughters to the wedding. It was 
a foul week, and it rained on Wednesday night. 
Did you notice that we did not hire carriages to 
take our wives and daughters to the prayer- 
meeting? 

These comparisons are recalled because they 
exist between things all of which are proper. It 
is proper to be a merchant, a member of a Cham- 
ber of Commerce, a Bank Director. It is proper 
to take a certain care of one's comfort and 
beauty, and to study etiquette for the sake of 
courtesy. None of these things are improper. 
But they are not the very highest concern of an 
immortal soul. We do not profess that they are. 
We do profess that our religion is. Now, when 
our children and clerks and customers and asso- 
ciates see this it is damaging to them and to the 
great cause of Truth and of Jesus in the world. 

If I had a church of two hundred communi- 
cants, all of whom were constantly meeting every 
claim which they constantly acknowledge, and 
if I had grace to do the same, I should not be 
afraid that any opposition would be able to break 
our moral power over this community. 

It was not the Samaritan intrigue but the 
Jewish apathy which permitted the Temple to lay 
so long unfinished. Mark ! I say Jewish apathy } 



not opposition. The address of the prophet was 
not to those who did not desire the Lord's House 
to be built, or who believed that it ought not to 
be built : it was to those who believed that it 
ought to be built and must be built, and who 
greatly wished that it were built, but who said, 
" Not yet ! " The work was to be dorie at some 
time : this they all consented to, but that time 
was not yet. 

This precisely describes the temper of thou- 
sands who crowd our churches in this day. 
Probably I am addressing hundreds such this 
morning. Your case, if you be such, is stated 
in a very few words : yoti are orthodox but inac- 
tive : your inactivity produces disastrous results, 
from which your orthodoxy cannot save you : 
your orthodoxy is so sound that it actually lulls 
you into a false security. From that I desire to 
arouse you to-day. 

I wish to avoid all grounds of difference, and 
to select a few topics upon which all serious and 
intelligent attendants on public Christian wor- 
ship agree, that I may earnestly call attention 
to the fact that correctness of opinions and 
ruinousness of conduct may co-exist in the his- 
tory of the same individual. We shall probably 
see how close a resemblance there is between 
much that we do and the course of the Jews to 
whom Haggai preached. 

Notice that they did not deny the existence of 
God, nor inveigh against religion as a super- 
stition : that they did not deny the propriety and 
profit of public worship, and the necessity of 
having a Temple. They said, "Jehovah is:" 
they said, " The Temple Jehovah's House is:" 
they said, " That Temple should be built." How 
entirely correct these opinions were ! But they 
said, " Not yet ! the time is not come !" Their 
sin lay in putting off not doubtful things, but 
things they knew were right and good and 
beautiful, nay, imperative. The Temple must 
be built : that was a proposition never to be dis- 
cussed ; but the time was an open question. 
They did not see that a postponement of action, 
in things that are imperative at the present mo- 
ment, is a denial by the conduct of that which the 
intellect affirms and urges. It sets the whole 
life on a contradiction, which weakens the powers 
and breaks the influence. And instances of this 
conflict between the professed opinions and the 
open conduct of people abound inside the Church 
and outside. Let us consider a few such. 

i. There is the subject of serious attention to 
one's personal salvation. 

There can be no controversy as to that. What- 
ever question may arise on a man's duty in other 



Yet 



283 



things, no regular and serious attendant on 
Christian worship — and it is that class I address 
to-day — will deny that it is a man's duty to give 
serious attention to his soul, so that, as much as 
in him lies, he shall see that it receives no dam- 
age from any malign influences in the universe, 
and shall receive all possible good from all pos- 
sible sources. Do we not all so thoroughly agree 
on that, that there is no room for controversy? 
Nay, can we not increase the circle of believers 
in that proposition from those who are not 
regular attendants on Christian worship ? Are 
there not those who irregularly enter churches, 
who are absorbed in other things, who are sel- 
dom quite serious about anything which is not 
material and capable of having its value stated 
in currency : and are there not others who are 
far from leading orderly lives, who, if you put the 
appeal seriously to them, will not frankly admit 
that they believe their souls to be their most 
valuable possessions, and that if they lose their 
souls nothing will compensate that loss? 

And yet, are all those people seeking to keep 
their souls from harm, and bring in all spiritual 
benediction? They study their health. They 
go to sea-shore or mountain or medicinal springs, 
for physical improvement. They study art and 
science and literature for mental improvement. 
And all these things they do while they wholly 
neglect the culture of the soul, and while they 
admit that the soul is more than their body, and 
more valuable than all fortune and all intellect- 
ual accomplishments. They will attend to this 
great interest, but not yet / 

The young man has his "wild oats" to sow, a 
species of spiritual agriculture he has never seen 
bring a harvest of greatness or goodness to any 
other young man. Alas ! for that mad sowing ! 
It consumes the time in which the garden of the 
Lord should be cultivated. The Lord of the 
vineyard says, " Go work in my vineyard, and 
what is right that will I pay you." The young 
man says, " Excuse me: I go into another field, 
and there I sow my 'wild oats.' " Will it ever 
pay him ? Never. Does he know that ? Yes : he 
ought to know that he who sows the wind must 
reap the whirlwind. Why does he do it? He be- 
lieves that later in the day he will go into the 
Lord's vineyard. He does not deny that he should 
do so, some time. He professes to believe that only 
the fruits gathered from that vineyard will endure 
in the garners of God. He forgets that, having 
sown his " wild oats," he must stay to reap 
them, and that there will be no time thereafter. 

A young woman professes to believe in the 
spiritual world, and expects to save her soul at 



last. But she must have her frivolities. She can- 
not think of devoting herself to Jesus now. She 
will hereafter. If you should be able to assure 
her, amid her heartless course of coquetry, that 
she would never come to Jesus, and never be 
a Christian, and never have that everlasting life 
which is the portion of believers, you would 
petrify her with horror. If you could show her 
a hard, hopeless, dark-souled old woman, dying, 
being ripped off from this life, to which she had 
glued her soul ; if, to that rose-cheeked, cherry- 
lipped, lily-browed, violet-eyed, beautiful young 
belle, you could show a sister dying in a cellar- 
brothel, dying horribly, eaten up of loathsome 
disease, in utter social and spiritual loneliness, 
and tell the gay young thing that that lost girl 
was once as hilarious and fascinating as she, and 
lived in the same house on the same avenue, and 
that to that state, or to the condition of the 
hard old hopeless woman, and to a worse hell 
beyond, she, the beautiful, must come at last, 
unless she be a Christian, she could not endure to 
think that of herself, but would say, " I must be 
saved ! I will be saved !" " Then be a Chris- 
tian now,'''' would be your response. And her 
reply would be, " Not yet !" 

And there are men of business, whose business 
tact and sense are very great, who know that 
there is no merchandise of silver and gold like 
wisdom, who know that they can obtain riches 
surpassing all that the mine and the ocean con- 
ceal, and also mean to do it, when they have 
gathered the small-wares and petty gains of earth. 
But not now / There is some undertaking on 
hand which seems very important to them, some 
great railroad to be projected, some large Bank or 
Insurance Company to be inaugurated, some vast 
land speculation to be engineered. " Great/' 
" large," " vast !" Ask such a man to put these 
things in comparison with the possible achieve- 
ments of a forgiven and purified soul, working 
with Jesus on the fields of eternity, and he will 
readily admit that these are greater than those : 
and he means to have these : but not yet! 

There are men held away from a Christian life 
by bad habits and bad associations. They know 
that the fascination of gaming and drinking is 
most hurtful to their souls. They know that 
the first act toward a Christian life will be to 
burst the bonds of these sinful habits, and they 
know they ought to do so, and they are always 
intending to do so, but — not yet ! It does re- 
quire much moral courage to say to one's asso- 
ciates, " Gentlemen, I must quit the Club. The 
associations here hold me to the vices of gaming 
and drinking. A Christian's money is Christ's 



284 Not 



money, and I dare not fob God. A Christian's 
body is a temple for the Holy Ghost, and I can 
no longer use mine as the instrument of mere 
sensual pleasure. And I am going to be a Chris- 
tian." It is hard to do that. I do not see how 
any man can unless aided by God's Holy Spirit. 
But it must be done. And men know it. They 
will, some time, but — not yet ! 

And thus serious devotion to the work of sav- 
ing one's soul is postponed by thousands who 
admit that the duty is paramount and the in- 
terest is supreme. 

2. ''The time is not come" causes, also, the 
postponement of honest self-examination. 

Every reasonable man admits that it is of the 
utmost importance that every man know all 
about himself. Self-deception does no good. 
It does not heal a sick man to be ignorant of 
the fact that he is diseased. It does prevent the 
adoption of remedial methods. It is always 
best to know the worst of our affairs, the worst 
of our health, of our pecuniary condition, of 
our credit with our fellow-men, and, above all, 
of our spiritual estate. 

It is senseless to prefer a brief enjoyment of 
false security. It unmans us. It often ruins us. 
But a strictly honest self-examination is painful. 
It is always a revelation of defects, often of de- 
formities. It is offensive to our selfishness. 
Who can bear it? It is so much more easy to 
take a general view of our affairs, and if that 
does not demonstrate our utter present ruin, we 
prefer to go on a little longer. 

It is that which makes merchants bankrupt. 
They feel a little uncertain about their affairs, 
but they will not probe them to the bottom. 
They extend their operations on the credit of 
the best aspect of their affairs, instead of build- 
ing only on ground which they know is theirs. 
There must come a time when they shall know 
all. A postponement may make it so that when 
that knowledge comes it will be of no service in 
the reparation of their losses or the management 
of their business. Better for a merchant to 
know every morning just what he owes and just 
what he owns, even if it make him contract his 
business and sacrifice many of his pleasures. 
Better that than ruin. Better for his comfort, 
better for his reputation, better for his future 
operations. 

Self-searching would lead to repentance, and 
faith, and a Christian life, as a surgical opera- 
tion would, after the pain and the soreness, bring 
healing and health. But between the present 
state of the patient and recovery lies that sur- 
gical operation. He dreads that. For dread of 



Yet. 



that he postpones healing and the health. 
Just so it is with our souls. We will admit that 
a man must, at some time, know himself to the 
bottom of his soul, and that this knowledge is 
to be acquired by self-examination. It must be 
done, but — not yet / 

3. This same plea leads to a postponement 
of a public confession of Jesus. 

When men of thought or sentiment consider 
the claims of Jesus and His religion, they per- 
ceive or feel, generally both, that they are 
bound by all the ties of honor which bind men 
to one another to stand by Him who has done 
more for the race than all other men. Any 
failure to respect the least wish of this Jesus, 
who is my greatest benefactor, to whom I am 
under the greatest possible debt of love, is an 
ingratitude which sadly damages my manhood. 
Why should I pride myself on my fidelity to 
other men if I be unfaithful to this Man ? He 
expressly desires me to confess Him before men. 
He asks obedience to all God's moral regulations 
for His sake, for Jesus' sake. He asks my trust 
in Him, after displays of omnipotence and 
omniscience, and proofs of boundless love by 
boundless sacrifice. He naturally expects a 
public acknowledgment of my friendship for 
Him. It is His due. It is my duty. 

This is the belief, as they frankly admit, of 
thousands of people in Christendom who allow 
month after month to pass without confessing 
Jesus. They profess to believe that if they do 
not confess Him before men, He will renounce 
them before His Father and the holy angels. 
They do not intend to submit themselves to 
that greatest disgrace and ruin. They must, 
therefore, make a public confession of Jesus as 
their Saviour; and they will — but not yet / Not 
yet ! although the judgment-seat may be set 
for them this night ! 

4. Lastly, we come inside the Church. Pro- 
fessed Christians all unite in acknowledging that 
the greatest things should be done for Jesus. 

Why are not those things done by us? Be- 
cause we are the people that say, " The time is 
not come, the time that the Lord's House should 
be built." We deny nothing to the Lord in 
our professions. Our opinions are orthodox 
enough. There is no denial of right thought, 
but there is lack of right action. We put off 
what we know must, at some time, be done, but 
not at this time. 

There are three influences producing in us 
this injurious spirit of procrastination. 

In the first place, we exaggerate the difficul- 
ties. 



Yet. 



285 



There are always difficulties in every great 
undertaking, and frequently in smaller enter- 
prises. To postpone the beginning of a great 
operation because of the difficulties, is no wiser 
than never to undertake anything that is great. 
The postponement will not diminish the dif- 
ficulties. It will always be hard to do anything 
greater than we have ever done before. To a 
man, with a manly spirit, difficulties provoke 
resistance and effort. 

It was not easy for those fifty thousand Jews 
to come back from captivity in a distant land, 
and replant themselves, and begin to rebuild 
their great Temple which had been so splendid 
a structure, and to rehabilitate their nationality. 
It was not easy to set themselves against the 
machination of "the Dinaites and the Aphar- 
sathchites, the Tarpelites, the Apharsites, the 
Archevites, the Babylonians, the Susanchites, 
the Dehavites, the Elamites, and the rest of the 
nations whom the great and noble Asnapper 
brought over and set in the cities of Samaria," 
led, as they were, by Rehum the chancellor and 
Shimshai the scribe. 

But what had they to bring against these ? 
The decree of Cyrus, their own numbers and 
strength, and, above all, that God, for whom 
they were building, who had led their fathers 
from Egypt, and had overthrown Pharaoh, and 
established His people in the land, and caused 
wealth to flow in until their king, Solomon, could 
erect the superb Temple in Jerusalem, and who 
had delivered Daniel from the den of lions, and 
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from the 
furnace of fire, and had put it into the heart of 
Cyrus to release them — they had this Jehovah, 
God of Hosts, to set over against their difficulties. 

No, brethren, we are kept from doing great 
things not because they are great and difficult, for 
we know that we must do them, but because we 
exaggerate the difficulties as compared with the 
resources of Christian faith. To him that be- 
lieves all things are possible. If possible and 
obligatory, we should not strive to avoid by post- 
poning. 

Another reason is our covetousness. 

That is the special besetment of Christian 
people. They cannot commit other sins, because 
those sins are conspicuous and tell on their con- 
sciences, but they can live covetously and no 
man know it. I have known men expelled from 
churches for heresy, adultery, lying, theft, and 
murder, but I never knew one who was excluded 
for covetousness. If any communicant, in any 
of our churches, should burn paper to his ances- 
tors as the Chinese do, or set up a Hindoo or 



an African idol in his house and worship it daily, 
there is not a church that would not expel him. 
St. Paul says, u Covetousness is idolatry." A 
covetous man is as certainly leading a life of sin 
as a thief or a liar, and is classed by the Apostle 
with those who have forsaken the living God 
and are worshipping gods that have no life. 

We do not like to individualize, but we see 
that this sin is as general now as it was when 
Haggai and Zechariah began to thunder on the 
consciences of the Jews of their day. The time 
to build the Temple had not arrived, they said. 
They had not grown rich enough. They were 
too busy with the reconstruction of their private 
fortunes. But they had plenty of time to send 
to Lebanon for cedar, and build beautiful villas 
on the good sites round about the Temple ; and 
they found the means to do it. God could en- 
dure it no longer. He cried to them by the 
mouth of the prophet, saying, "Is it time for 
you, O ye, to dwell in your ceiled houses — and 
this House lie waste ? " There was the bare 
foundation of the Temple in some places, and 
perhaps in others walls that had been run up 
partially, fourteen years before, now tumbling into 
ruins, while their houses shone on the hill-sides, 
and they had all needed comforts. 

Alas ! it is so still. It is painful to see, in this 
day, what a struggle has to be made if anything 
is needed for the cause of Jesus and the Church 
of God. There are men who even complain if 
money is solicited in the Church, who, at home, 
do not wait for the asking, but provide it in ad- 
vance. There probably never would be, in any 
Christian Church on earth, another solicitation 
for any object, from this to the judgment-day, if 
every baptized Christian would do his duty in 
relation to money : because the treasuries of 
our churches would always be full and the intel- 
lect of the Church would be given to the higher 
question, " How shall we best use this for the 
work of the Lord ? " 

It is a shame for any Christian man to live in 
a house which costs more than the church in 
which he worships. It is a shame for any Chris- 
tian man to spend twenty times as much on his 
family annually as he does on the work of the 
Lord. Yet, many of us do it, and then, when 
something great is to be done, we plead poverty 
and say " the time is not yet ! " The stones 
out of our walls and the timbers out of our ceil- 
ings will cry against us. Our business is pushed, 
our plans prosper, our houses are built, wljile 
the work of the Lord is neglected, and the foun- 
dation of the Lord's House lie bare. 

Lastly, I think that we are led to put off Chris- 



286 



Yet. 



tian effort by our disposition to wait until all 
things are ready. 

No experience seems able to cure men of this 
propensity. There probably never was an un- 
dertaking of any magnitude for which all things 
were completely ready. Who can take a trip to 
Europe and not leave something undone that he 
wished to do ? Who can open a store, or launch 
a boat, or form a company, and not find that 
something has to be pushed at the last ? If there 
be anything imperative, our duty is to begin it 
and make things ready. 

If all the great improvements of the age had 
been held back until all things were ready, they 
never would have been brought forward. They 
have had to fight their way. While the whole 
civilized world is enjoying the uses of the tele- 
graph, how few think of the immense force that 
was necessary to make the world receive it ! Our 
venerable fellow-citizen, Prof. Morse, can tell you 
how he was ridiculed in the beginning, and how 
many days of almost despair, with straitened 
means, he spent in bringing capital and legisla- 
tion to the aid of invention. 

All the great moral reforms have had the 
same history. Suppose that Wesley and White- 
field had waited until all thing;; were ready in 
the Anglican Church for a revival of gospel 
preaching and spiritual power, where had been 
the immense impetus which Christianity has re- 
ceived in the last century? Suppose Luther 
had waited for Pope and Cardinal and Bishop 
and Priest to be ready for reformation, where 
had been that immense bursting of bonds which 
made his career glorious ? Suppose our adora- 
ble Saviour had waited until all the world should 
be ready to receive Him as its Redeemer, where 
had been our great redemption? 

No, dear brethren : we must not put off what 
we ought to do, but do it, begin doing it now, 
do it as fast and as well as possible ; and thus, 
and only thus, can we expect the best results. 

How many evils come of procrastination, es- 
pecially to those who admit that that which they 
put off must certainly be done ! 

How it deadens the conscience by blinding the 
senses and blunting the sensibilities ! A man's 
orthodoxy and good resolutions are so much 
the worse for him, if he do not act on them. 
He says, "Are not my opinions all sound? 
And have I not promised that I will at so?ne time 
do right ? What more can be expected ?" And 
he does not see that that postponement is all 
that is necessary to his ruin. The sick man 
knows that he is sick, knows he must take a 
certain medicine, and promises that he will do it : 



does that cure him ? Not at all. All that is 
necessary to secure his death is to keep him 
satisfied with the promise that he will take the 
medicine and to keep him postponing the time. 

You need not inveigh against Jesus. All you 
need do for your spiritual ruin is merely to post- 
pone the time of your coming. It is easier to 
do so when one is old than when one is young. 
It becomes easier all the while, until, at last, 
our " Not yet" bridges death, and lands us in 
the desolation beyond the grave. 

How it loses opportunities for us ! If, when a 
man first has a conviction that he ought to do a 
certain thing, he would do it, how his moral 
strength would increase ! Every year a man 
stays away from Jesus he loses opportunities of 
laying up treasure in heaven, and of doing a 
friend's part by his great friend Jesus. 

How this spirit of procrastination sets us in 
opposition to God's plan, which must be the 
best plan. God's time is " Now !" That ought 
to end all controversy and direct all action. The 
Lord says, "Now is the accepted time!" O 
think, my brethren, how impertinent and in- 
sulting is our reply, "The time is not come." 
Who knows, God or we ? 

There never will be a time for coming to Jesus 
better than this time — never in the history of 
one of you. Begin to build now. Just where you 
are, with just what you have, just as you can, 
begin, now begin ; and how rapidly you will 
find your resources growing and your power in- 
creasing. Think what it is you are to build, a 
Temple for the glorious God to dwell in : and 
when the sweat is pouring from you, and your 
back and your brain are aching with work and 
thought, think what a sublime thing is to fol- 
low this toil, when the Lord shall be pleased to 
come in His glory and fill the Temple you have 
erected to His honor and for His dwelling. 

Do not put it off. Let not selfishness, covet- 
ousness, or sloth, make you postpone, for, if 
"the time is not come," it will never, never, 
never come. Your return to God, your ac- 
knowledgment of Jesus, your new life must 
begin in some "now :" oh, for the sake of your 
peace and growth and everlasting happiness, let 
it be this " now." 

Do not say "not yet!" The universe and 
eternity may catch your words up into a frightful 
echo, and when all the opportunities shall have 
been lost, and you shall be pursuing peace and 
life, crying, " when shall I find peace, when shall 
I find life ?" eternity and the universe may send 
back the doleful reply, " Not yet ! not yet ! not 
yet !" 



XLVI. 

AN ADDKESS AT THE HOL Y COMMUNION. 
"A DISCIPLE OF JESUS, BUT SECRETLY. '"" JOHN, XIX. 38. 



These words are spoken of Joseph of Ari- 
mathea. 

Of this person we learn several things, as he 
is mentioned by all the Evangelists. 

He was " of Arimathea," probably Rama, or 
Ramathaim, in Ephraim, where Samuel was 
born. 

He was rich. This circumstance was consid- 
ered worth perpetuating in the inspired records. 
Sometimes, it is good for a man to be rich : 
sometimes, it is not. If he use his wealth for 
the accomplishment of God's purposes, it is an 
honor; if not, it becomes a disgrace. 

This man held a very high position. He was 
a member of the Grand Council of the nation, 
and had a voice in the decisions of the Sanhe- 
drim. But even that might have been a dis- 
grace to him. Office is not proof of goodness. 
Unless a man be faithful in his office, it is a re- 
proach to him. We know, in our own day, that 
to hold office under government is a presumption 
against a man, which, however, he can over- 
come by being a just and a good man, and then 
the office becomes resplendent with the light of 
his virtues. 

This Joseph was a "just" man. He was 
more than that: he was "good." I suppose 
that by these words the inspired historians mean 
that he was not only careful to meet all the 
requirements of justice, but ready also to follow 
all the suggestions of benevolence. He was 
disposed to do right and to do more. He seems 
to have been present when the Sanhedrim sat 
on the case of Jesus. He did not sympathize 
with their rancor. He would not consent to 
their wicked counsel. He would not partake 
their wicked deed. He seems to have been in 
a very small minority, Nicodemus alone voting 
with him, if really Nicodemus did, against the 
killing of Jesus. 

He was not only a moralist, not simply striv- 
ing to keep the letter of the law, but he was 



pious : he was waiting for the kingdom of God, 
according to St. Luke's account. 

Such a man, so wise, so good, so just, in such 
a social position, had watched the progress of 
Jesus, had studied his words and actions, had 
compared them with the Holy Scriptures, and 
reached the conclusion that this man was the 
promised Messiah. 

And yet, so great was the hold of caste on 
him, so fearful was he of the loss of his position, 
official and social, that he did not manfully de- 
clare his convictions and take the side to which, 
in his heart, he belonged. He was a " disciple " 
" secretly " " for fear of the Jews." 

But when the catastrophe came, and Jesus 
expired on the cross, this man's love overflowed 
and filled his whole nature. He had no fear of 
Pilate and the Roman power. Jesus was dead. 
In an hour He might be cast into a trench with 
the corpses of the crucified thieves. And Joseph 
could not brook that indignity. He had not been 
associated with Jesus, had probably never spent 
as much time with Him as Nicodemus, but he 
believed in Him, he was striving privately to live 
by His teachings, and he could not endure to 
know that the precious remains of Jesus, the 
body that had held such a soul, should be buried 
with common rogues. So, he went hastily back 
to the city, and boldly in to Pilate, and craved 
the body of Jesus. 

There was another man, in the same station 
in life, named Nicodemus, who also had been 
deeply interested in Jesus, perhaps not so much 
as Joseph of Arimathea, to the extent of being 
His disciple even secretly. He must, however, 
have been convinced that Jesus was a prophet. 
In a night-interview which he had with our 
blessed Lord in the early part of His ministry, 
Nicodemus confessed that our Lord was a teacher 
sent from God, and that no man could do those 
miracles unless God were with him. But such 
was his constitutional timidity that he never 



%88 



Secret Diseipleship. 



publicly acknowledged even that conviction. 
When the Sanhedrim were unjustly seeking to 
destroy Jesus, without even the show of a trial, 
Nicodemus interposed a few feeble words, utter- 
ing a general principle, but was immediately 
silenced by a sneer. 

But now that Jesus was dead, the affection of 
this Sanhedrist came out more warmly, and 
when he saw Joseph, his colleague in the Council, 
going to beg the dead body, — an office generally 
performed by the kinsmen of the executed, — 
Nicodemus joined him, bringing a hundred 
pounds of myrrh and aloes. 

What a striking picture does this burial pre- 
sent us ! The dead Jesus has no kinsman, no 
kinswoman, no professed friend, no disciple, to 
go and beg His body, none but this man, who 
had probably admired and loved Him at a dis- 
tance, but had had no intimacy with him : and 
there was no one to bring what was necessary 
for a decent burial, but a man who had once 
come to Him by night, and never came again. 
Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, and 
Thomas, and all the others, have left Him to be 
thrown into a ditch with Barabbas. But Joseph 
and Nicodemus save His body and carry it rev- 
erently and tenderly to Joseph's new sepulchre. 

I cannot forbear pausing to say, that probably 
in the case of every man, most probably in the 
case of every public man, there are secret foes 
and secret friends. 

When a man has succeeded in attaching 
others to him, they cannot see how it is possible 
that virtues which are so manifest to them, 
and beautiful in their eyes, are not equally con- 
spicuous and splendid to others. We cannot 
see how others can hate our friends. But those 
others cannot see how we, who seem so honest, can 
love the people whom they so hate. Every public 
man may lay his plans and work them with the 
assurance that some one will secretly oppose 
their accomplishment. 

But, on the other hand, there is this consola- 
tion, that every man of positive character, who 
leads an active life, has many secret friends. 
There are often reasons why they do not ap- 
proach him. Modesty, timidity, the opposition 
of friends, the surroundings of a man, may keep 
him years from declaring his real sentiments 
toward one whose silent friend he is. But, let 
an emergency arise where he is needed, and 
how nobly the secret friend comes to the front ! 
Who could have predicted that Joseph and 
Nicodemus, two members of the Council that 
had hunted Him down, would have performed 
the rites of sepulture for Jesus? It should have 



fallen to others, but they took the duty and the 
honor. 

They were certainly disciples. They believed 
in Jesus. They loved Jesus. There can be no 
mistake, I think, in those points. They did 
not believe sufficiently to come down from their 
seats in the Sanhedrim and follow the lonely 
Teacher on His circuits of preaching and benefi- 
cence. But they loved Him, and probably He 
was never so beautiful in their eyes as when He 
was enduring the torturing inquisition of the 
High-Priest, than when he was suffering under 
Pontius Pilate, than when He hung thorn- 
crowned and pierced and dead on the cross of 
Golgotha. There must then have come to these 
good men a painful repentance of the secrecy 
of their diseipleship. They had refused that 
dead Man what was His due when He was 
living. 

Always in the sight of the dead our short- 
comings toward them become most poignant 
recollections. We are recalled from our care- 
lessness by the fact that we never can repair 
the wrongs we have done them, nor pay them 
the attentions which we have thoughtlessly or 
heartlessly withheld. Blessed is the man who 
can look into the face of his dead friend with 
none of this bitterness in his grief! Perhaps the 
devotion of Joseph and Nicodemus was all the 
more devout because they had so signally failed 
of their duty while the Master was alive. Their 
diseipleship had been sincere but defective. 

Let not your diseipleship be thus defective. I 
must believe that in this congregation there are 
men who, like Joseph and Nicodemus, are dis- 
ciples, but secretly. It cannot be that these 
hundreds of men, into whose eyes I am looking, 
can have heard so much of Jesus, can have paid 
even ordinary attention to the presentation of 
His character in the Bible and from the pulpit, 
can have watched the progress of His teaching 
and spirit through the world, and witnessed the 
effect of a sincere belief in Jesus on the whole 
nature of any man so believing, and not have 
somewhat joined themselves to His cause in 
their hearts. 

Nay, I do know men and women who are 
conscientious and devout and charitable, to 
whom there is nothing so divine as Jesus, who 
are most sensitive to whatever pertains to His 
interests and His honor, and are prayerfully 
striving to copy His life, while they are humbly 
trusting in Him for salvation, — men and women 
who, in my judgment, are even more disciples at 
heart than were Joseph and Nicodemus; and 
yet their diseipleship is secret : and the discovery 



Secret Discipleship. 



of evidences of it by their intimate friends is 
without their knowledge. Such are some of 
you, present to-day here, where the emblems 
of Christ's immortal love are set before your 
eyes. Let me beseech you to make your dis- 
cipleship open, as our dear Lord has made His 
love. 

You owe it to yourselves. 

The secrecy of your discipleship must be 
damaging to your whole character. There can 
possibly be no reason for it, worth stating in 
words, or that can satisfy a man's conscience or 
his God. To suppose that there are, is to sup- 
pose that there is something disgraceful or sinful 
in this discipleship : and, if there be such a thing, 
then no man ought to be a disciple of Jesus 
even secretly. It is wrong to belong to any 
society, or combination of men, membership in 
which one must conceal. I do not see how an 
honest man could hold such a relation. It is 
wrong to be married to any woman under any 
circumstances which make you wish to keep the 
marriage a secret. There is no other man than 
Jesus whose friend you would be, and yet be 
careful to hide the fact from other friends. It 
begins to make you doubtful of truth, and of 
honor, and of Jesus, and of yourself. It in- 
creases the cowardice of your character. He 
that will not openly espouse the cause of Jesus, 
when all his convictions are for Jesus, and when 
in secret he has really some love for Jesus, can 
never be a comrade to be relied upon in any 
great undertaking. 

This secrecy will diffuse its baleful influence 
through all parts of your character. Few things 
can be more injurious than to hold well-formed 
opinions which have produced settled convic- 
tions, and then conceal those opinions and fail 
to act resolutely on those convictions. All the 
world unites to condemn cowardice and despise 
cowards. But what is cowardice but an unwill- 
ingness to take all the consequences of doing right, 
whether those consequences be pleasant to flesh 
and blood or otherwise? It is quite certain that 
even where there is real discipleship in the heart, 
if it be not open the discipleship will destroy the 
secrecy and become apparent and pronounced, 
or else the secrecy will destroy the discipleship ; 
and it may require prompt action on your part 
to prevent this last result, which would be a dire 
catastrophe. You owe it to yourselves, to your 
own manliness, to come out openly for Jesus. 

And, you owe it to others. 

There are men and women, some of the best 
in the world, who have embarked character, 
and reputation, and fortune, and life in the 



cause of Jesus. They believe Him to be the 
Saviour of the world, and they take Him to be 
their personal Saviour. They believe that He 
has done so much for the world as to compel 
them in honor to do all that they can to pro- 
mote His glory among men. And they further 
believe that the hope of men for the future is 
with Jesus. They openly commit themselves 
to His cause for weal or for woe. They are 
right or wrong. You cannot say that they are 
wrong, for, as a secret disciple, you believe that 
they are right. If they are right, every honora- 
ble man in the world, who believes as they do, 
is bound to stand by them. You do believe as 
they do. It will be most unmanly to let others 
go out and fight your battles, risking everything 
for a cause in the success of which you are 
as deeply interested as they, and for which you 
are not willing to risk anything. Open disciples 
may be supposed to have little claims on unbe- 
lievers, but surely they have great claims on 
you. 

Then, there are the non-confessors in your 
circle : and they are of two classes — those who, 
like yourself, are disciples secretly, and those 
who are not disciples at all. 

The former may need only that one of their 
station in life should step into the ranks, and they 
would then promptly enlist in the sacramental 
hosts of the Lord's elect. It was so in the case 
we have been considering. If Joseph of Arima- 
thea had not espoused the cause of Jesus when 
he did, there is no probability that Nicodemus 
would have done so. It was late for both. If 
one had not moved forward at that very time, 
perhaps both would have died outside the pale 
of discipleship. There maybe some Nicodemus 
waiting for your example. You owe it to him. 
Although you have so much weakened yourself 
by your concealment of your convictions, he 
is weaker than you. His timidity may be con- 
stitutional, and all he waits for is a companion 
in this great step of a public adhesion to Jesus. 
Give him that help. Pastors will tell you how 
frequently they find husbands who are waiting 
for their wives, and wives who are waiting for 
their husbands. Sometimes one will conceal 
the state of his or her heart from the other, and 
this secret discipleship is hurtful to both. If 
you are ever to take Jesus for your Saviour, do 
it now, and you will find that others have been 
waiting for you, needing only your example to 
throw them into an active Christian life, ready to 
bring their hundredweight of myrrh and aloes 
the moment you go to crave the body of Jesus. 

You owe it to those non-confessors who are 



$90 



Secret Discipleship. 



not disciples of Jesus in any way. They fail to 
see their need of Jesus. You may never have 
thought what an argument against Jesus your 
position affords them. They do not know that 
you have any love for Jesus, that you are striving 
to live by His precepts, and that in your hearts 
you trust in Him as your Saviour. They do see 
that you are faithful, honorable, pure, and 
charitable, that your life is growing in beauty 
and in strength, and it never occurs to them that 
you owe all of this to Jesus. Nay, they hold 
that Jesus is unnecessary, because in your case 
they think they have proof that all goodliness 
of living may be achieved apart from Jesus. 
Your discipleship is honorable and useful to 
you, but your concealment is weak and hurtful 
both to yourself and to others. 

You owe it to these non-believers to take away 
that confirmation in infidelity which your ex- 
ample affords them. It would startle them to 
hear from your own lips that you owe all to 
Jesus. It would direct their thoughts to the 
Saviour. It would be another man taken from 
the ranks of the wicked, the unbelieving, the 
thoughtless, and added to the company of Jesus. 
It would be putting your influence on the right 
side, whereas it is now on the wrong side. 

You owe it to Jesus. 

If, in your heart, you are at all a disciple, — 
and such my appeal to-day supposes you to be, 
as it is addressed to no others, — you acknowledge 
that you owe all to Jesus, teaching, support, and 
salvation. He is your Lord and Saviour. He 
has bestowed the highest possible benefaction 
on you, even the hope of immortal glory. You 
believe that for this Jesus made the most stupen- 
dous sacrifice of love possible to man or God. 
He has laid you under the greatest possible 
obligations, obligation which, in your heart, you 
acknowledge. He has a right to demand of you 
all sacrifices that may be required for the dis- 
charge of your duty toward Him. 

You have no other such friend, you never had, 
vou never will have, you never can have. No 
good opinion of your fellow-men can weigh 
against His disapproval. In the scales of your 
thought and your feeling it should be as a feather 
to a world. The slightest expression of His 
wishes should control you in all things. 

He is the Captain of your salvation. His 
command should have power to march you 
single-handed up against an armed host. To 
disobey Him is to be a poltroon: to leave Him, 
is to be a deserter. 

He is the lover of your souls. He left heaven 
to win you. In your heart you do love Him, 



if you be a disciple, even although secretly. 
What desires He expresses are the wishes of a 
lover, — a wise, pure, devoted lover. He cannot 
ask you to do what would not be equally honor- 
able to Him and to you. He has left some 
requests, so natural, and true, and sweet, that 
it seems inconceivable that any man shall love 
Him, and not gladly and tenderly obey them. 
The slightest wishes of a dear, dead friend, 
are solemn, tender laws to us. We do to-day 
what our mothers taught us to do in childhood, 
and for the sake of those mothers, who have been 
in heaven a score of years, we go on doing what 
we first began to do because it pleased them. 
Jesus has left a request. 

There, in that chancel, under that white cloth, 
lie the symbols of measureless love and sacri- 
fice. They take us back to the day when Jesus 
was on the cross, and Joseph and Nicodemus 
were breaking the secrecy of their discipleship. 
Jesus consecrated this simple meal of bread and 
wine into something sacramental. He left you 
His wishes: "Do this; and do it in remem- 
brance of Me." And, sir, you have never done 
so. 

Ah, madam, if your dearest friend had made 
the sacrifice of his life to save you from stain, 
and wrong, and ruin, and, in going to die by the 
wild beasts of the forests or by men more savage 
than they, he had tenderly asked you to hang 
his picture in your house, and say to those who 
came, "He was my Friend," would you not do 
it ? Jesus died for you. You owe all for both 
worlds to Him. He asks that you do eat this 
bread and drink this wine, memorially, for His 
sake. And you do not. 

While He was alive, Joseph and Nicodemus 
concealed their affection for Him, and Peter 
denied Him, and Judas betrayed Him; now that 
He is dead, you slight Him, you set His dying 
requests at naught, and go through life as if 
the world and you had not a Jesus. How can 
you maintain your present position ? How is it 
possible that you do not give up Jesus or aban- 
don your secret discipleship? The time will 
come when you must do one or the other. 

Your secret discipleship is selfish and un- 
grateful,- — hurtful to you, hurtful to others, 
hurtful to Jesus. " Selfish " and " ungrateful :" 
why, where can we find two words both applica- 
ble to the same deed or the same temper which 
combine more abhorrent elements? "Selfish 
and ungrateful ! " what a character that de- 
scribes ! I will leave it to your calmest judg- 
ment to decide whether a man, who is attempt- 
ing to be a disciple secretly, is not confirming 



Secret Discipleship. 



291 



himself in selfishness and ingratitude, and 
whether, if these be not overcome, they will not 
eat out all of discipleship there may now exist 
in that man's character. 

On this subject men are generally governed 
by their feelings. The two persons whose case 
has led us to this train of thought to-day, were 
gentlemen and scholars in their time. They 
had good minds, good training, good position. 
They could not resist the conviction which the 
life of Jesus forced on their intellects. Nico- 
demus put the case concisely and clearly when 
he said to Jesus, " Rabbi, we know that thou 
art a teacher come from God, for no man can do 
these miracles that thou doest, except God be 
with him." Here was a process of reasoning. 
Their judgments were convinced. The first 
feeling in the heart of a man of truth and gen- 
erosity, would naturally be, to declare himself 
in favor of a man who brought such credentials 
for his mission. 

Another feeling was produced by another set 
of facts. The authorities were against Jesus. 
It was wrong in them to take that ground ; but 
they did it ; and they had power ; and they 
could expel Joseph and Nicodemus from the 
Senate of the nation, and afflict them with many 
social tortures. It was an emotion overmaster- 
ing their reason which kept them so long in 
secret discipleship. 

Men talk about religionists being carried 
away with their feelings. I charge that men 
outside the Christian societies do much more 
frequently allow their feelings to control their 
judgments than Christians do. You know, in 
your soul, that if you had followed your convic- 
tions instead of your feelings, you would have 
been a professed Christian long ago. Your 
pastor knows, that for any one man who has 
taken the ground that he ought not to be an 
open Christian, five hundred have excused 
themselves by saying that they did Jiot feel like 
it. To-day I am urging you to allow your 
reason to triumph over your feelings, being 
quite sure that, if you do, you will this day 
openly espouse the cause of our dear Lord. 

" Joseph of Arimathea, being a disciple of 
Jesus, but secretly, for fear of the Jews." All 
the disciples, John and Peter, and the others, 
were afraid of the Jews, by which is meant the 
rulers among the Jews. The common people 
were afraid of them, for they had decreed that 
if any one should confess that Jesus was the 
Messiah, he should be cast out of the syna- 
gogue. That had a meaning then and there 
which it is quite difficult for us to understand. 



It does no man any harm among us to be put 
out of a congregation. But with them every 
Jew was born into the church. The whole na- 
tion was a church. The Temple was the Capitol, 
the priests were rulers. Excommunication 
meant loss of everything which men value, and 
which make life tolerable to a man who feels as 
if he could not live in any other place than 
where he is. A public profession on the part 
of Joseph and Nicodemus, would have devolved 
on them at once the greatest temporal disabili- 
ties and the heaviest spiritual censures. They 
would have been considered as bad men, and 
excluded from the society of their equals. The 
Apostles had forsaken all and followed Jesus. 
Joseph and Nicodemus could not do quite so 
much until they saw Jesus die. 

It has happened in the process of the ages 
that the things which created the feeling that 
suppressed open professions among the Jews, 
no longer have any influence, but the feeling is 
created by other things. Take your own case, 
my dear friend. You are striving to be just as 
much a Christian as you can without the open 
profession. Why ? 

Perhaps, first of all, you dread the committal 
of a public profession. 

Is not that a mere sentiment that has no basis 
in reason ? Ask yourself what that committal 
is. Is it to pledge you to forsake anything to 
which you should adhere ? Is it to pledge you 
to any belief you do not now really hold, or to 
any course of conduct you are not now striving 
to follow, or which you admit you should fol- 
low ? In your heart you have admitted that 
Jesus had the right to be your Master, and that 
you were bound to be His disciple. Without 
saying anything to any friend, you have been 
striving in secret to live up to that faith, and to 
keep His commandments. But your life is a 
failure because you are striving to accomplish 
an impossibility. He commands open disciple- 
ship. Whatever other of His commands you 
are striving to obey, disobedience to this is 
neutralizing all your obedience to those. 

It is as if a plant were capable of thought, and 
feeling, and locomotion, and should choose to 
put itself up under the joists of a cellar-floor, 
where there is no soil, nor moisture, nor light, 
nor heat, nor fresh air, and strive to produce 
there all the bloom of a perfect flower under 
favorable circumstances. An open discipleship 
commits you to nothing which you should not 
be and do, while it places you where you can 
have the advantage of all helps necessary to 
make you thorough. 



292 



Secret Discipleship. 



Reflect upon what Joseph and Nicodemus had 
lost by not making public profession of disci- 
pleship early in the blessed Christ's ministry. 
Quite early, we know, Nicodemus had become 
convinced that Jesus was a Teacher come from 
God. He made that admission to Jesus. Sup- 
pose he had gone to the Sanhedrim next day 
and declared himself. He would probably have 
been called to endure the pains and penalties we 
have spoken of ; but he would have lived in the 
comfort of knowing that he had done a most 
manly thing, and he would have had three 
years of personal intercourse with Jesus, with 
all the spiritual culture therefrom, and after the 
death of his Lord he would have had no bitter 
upbraidings. Moreover, Joseph would probably 
have joined him : and who knows how many 
others ? The whole face of things might have been 
changed, and the nation have been made ready 
to receive Jesus as their spiritual Messiah, and 
the doom of the Jews have been averted. God 
only knows where the end is of the effects of the 
failure of any man to do his whole duty. We 
can only speculate. But we do know that it is 
always damaging to refrain from doing what we 
know to be right because we do not feel like it. 

Perhaps, also, you fear yourself. 

Once committed to Jesus, you feel that you 
must follow Him through. You often say, 
" Can I ? Will my strength hold out ? Shall I 
not fail, and bring great disgrace on myself, and 
on Jesus ? If I may only struggle on in private 
awhile, perhaps I shall grow stronger, and then 
I will make a public profession." 

But no man ever found that a successful ex- 
periment. It is as if a man should say that he 
would lie in his bed until his strength came to 
him, and then he would arise and devote him- 
self to his work vigorously. He never will grow 
strong in the bed. It is as if a man should say, 
I will stay in my house and learn to swim, and 
then I will plunge into the water. He never can 
learn to swim out of the water. No man learns 
to fight in a military school, nor learns the 
practice of the law in a college, nor business 
from books. One must enter the army, go to 
the bar, begin to trade. Your strength will 
come as you do your duty, and it is your duty 
to obey your Lord and come to this holy sacra- 
ment to-day. 

You dishonor your Lord by the secrecy of your 
discipleship. He has said, "My grace is suf- 
ficient for thee." If you do not go forward on 
your line of duty, you betray a distrust in His 



truth or His goodness. Do consider that. It 
is not distrust of yourselves. That is always a 
virtue, even in angels. It is distrust of Jesus, 
and that is criminal. He will never let any man 
be plucked out of His hands, if the man willingly 
put himself in these dear powerful hands and — 
stay there. 

But, my brother, better secretly a disciple 
than not a disciple at all. If you are a real dis- 
ciple something may occur to bring you out, 
as the death of Jesus did Joseph and Joseph's 
action did Nicodemus. O that this day's pray- 
ers, and praises, and preaching, and holy sacra- 
ments may do that for you ! Perhaps your faith 
has been weak, and your love strong. The 
basis of love is faith : but perhaps your love may 
suddenly fling you into a position which shall so 
try your faith, and bring such responses to your 
faith as shall confirm you in open discipleship 
forever. So it seems to have happened with 
Joseph. His love for Jesus grew so that when 
he saw Him dead, he longed to save His pre- 
cious body from indignity, and so went boldly and 
craved it from Pilate. That numbered him with 
the disciples. The same sentiment in Nico- 
demus, stimulated into intense activity by all the 
prodigies of that Fassover-week which closed with 
the consummate terror and agony of Calvary, 
led him to acts that discovered his discipleship. 
Both these men are said to have been Christians 
ever afterward ; for which God be thanked ! 

Something of the kind may happen to you. 

But, suppose it should not ! Who knows 
how many a man had kept his discipleship cov- 
ered until he smothered it to death ? Who 
knows how many men once stood just where 
you do, just where Joseph and Nicodemus did 
before the crucifixion, but are now lost ? You 
have had presented to you a hundred times just 
what moved these two members of the Sanhe- 
drim to declare their relationship to Jesus ; and 
you have not yet been moved. If you postpone 
it to-day, may you not have so fastened upon 
yourselves the habit of procrastination that you 
will never be able to perform this duty ? 

By all you are losing in your present course, 
by all the rewards of manliness and virtue which 
will come when you do your duty, by all you 
owe the noble army of martyrs in all ages, by all 
you owe your fellow-men who are sinners, by all 
your own interest in immortality, by all you owe 
the blessed Christ, let me beseech you, just as 
you are, to join yourself to the company of Jesus, 
now, openly, freely, unreservedly, and forever. 



XLVII. 



14 ALL THINGS ARE OF GOD, WHO HATH RECONCILED US TO HIMSELF BY JESUS CHRIST, AN l> rfATH 
GIVEN TO US THE MINISTRY OF RECONCILIATION ; TO WIT, THAT GOD WAS IN CHRIST RECON- 
CILING THE WORLD UNTO HIMSELF, NOT IMPUTING THEIR TRESPASSES UNTO THEM J AND HATH 
COMMITTED UNTO US THE WORD OF RECONCILIATION." 2 CORINTHIANS, V. 1 8, 1 9. 



In the minds of men there are prejudices 
against God. 

These prejudices come originally from man's 
sinfulness and willful blindness, and unwilling- 
ness to examine the evidences of the character 
of God. 

But they are greatly nourished by the false 
Christianity which has been so largely presented 
to the world. It is unfortunate that there should 
be two kinds of Christianity, but that there are 
is obvious to all thoughtful minds. 

I. There is what I shall venture to call Pagan 
Christianity, because it is a mythologic repre- 
sentation of the character, deeds, purposes, and 
relations of the Supreme Being. I shall not 
now undertake to discover the genesis, and trace 
the development of this perversion of the teach- 
ing of Jesus. It exists ; and it is all the more 
dangerous because it does not bear its own true 
warning name, is not set forth as a mythology, 
a system developing preconceived ideas into rep- 
resentative facts, but is assumed, and presented 
in literature, not palpably, but ordinarily latent- 
ly. Now, when I strip this system bare you will 
acknowledge that I am not making a caricature. 
I proceed to this work in sorrow, not in anger. 

Pagan Christianity represents the Maker of 
heaven and earth as infinitely selfish, malicious, 
and powerful ; as having created the world either 
whimsically or wickedly, and as preserving the 
world, and the race of intelligent creatures in- 
habiting it, to carry forward certain iron-hard 
designs. He is presented as malignant from all 
eternity — or, being alone in His infinite autocracy 
as floundering gigantically through a despotism 
which is a horrid failure, and which He cannot 
make a complete success, or even a decent imi- 
tation of a success. According to this, God 
hates the world He made : has created intelligent 
beings and given them laws which they not only 



cannot keep, but cannot wholly apprehend, not 
to say comprehend ; and when poor mortals 
violate these laws, God loves to catch the sinner 
in the act and punish him therefor; and, that 
He may cover His horrible character with some 
veil that shall hide it, He has taken his only Son 
and cruelly slaughtered Him, the innocent for 
the guilty, that He might say to the world, 
" There, now, you see that I love you, my 
human children, more than I do my Eternal Son 
whom I have killed for your sakes;" and thus 
presenting Himself as a monster, according to all 
those laws of thought and intuitions of the hu- 
man soul He Himself had previously established, 
He does effectually drive His creatures still fur- 
ther from Him. 

Far be it from me to charge that any intelligent 
Christian ever presents such a view of God. 
But you know that, if they reduced it to words, 
this is the form in which the Christian doctrine 
is perversely held in the minds of many of your 
acquaintances. 

2. Christ's Christianity, as taught by Him- 
self and His inspired Apostles, stands in most di- 
rect contrast with all this. Substantially it teaches 
that God is essentially good, the vary goodness 
of the universe, the author of all good thoughts 
in men, the maker of the very conceptions of 
tenderness, love, goodness, kindness toward 
others ; that the creation of the world was not 
so much the stretching out of His powerful arm 
as the overflow of His transcendent lovingness ; 
that He loves all the creatures He has made, and 
takes no pleasure in their sin and suffering ; that 
all His law is righteous, true, and good, framed 
not as edicts of a selfish and tyrannical ruler, 
but as provisions in behalf of the welfare of all 
those who are to live and act under those laws, 
so that the law is their life ; that His goodness 
is over all His works, His infinite wisdom and 



294 



Reconciliation. 



power uniting with His infinite love in the sus- 
tentation, the vivification, the perpetual repair- 
ing, reinforcing, reinvigorating of all things, so 
that the minutest atom afloat in the darkness is as 
indestructible as an archangel, and every hair on 
every human head has number and weight in 
the census of God ; that it is utterly impossible 
to make God hate anything He hath made, 
especially man, but that He loves him with an 
everlasting love ; that when man wrung from the 
benediction of the freedom of his will that only 
thing which the soul of God hates, to wit, sin, 
wnich is the malediction of the universe, God 
did not allow His holy hatred of sin to beget in 
Him any unholy hatred of the sinner ; that the 
controversy as between God and man is alto- 
gether on the side of man, God resting in His 
purity, goodness, and lovingness ; that the evil 
and injury of sin are not only against God, but 
also against the evil-doer : that God always for- 
gives, pities, loves, and strives to save the sinner ;; 
that He brings to bear every practicable appli- 
ance of salvation — going all practicable lengths 
— doing all things that do not invade the domain 
of that right regal freedom of the will, the de- 
struction of which by any process and for any 
motive would be the most thorough and total 
damnation of a man ; that God is reconciled to 
the world ; that the supreme thought in the 
mind of God now is the reconciliation of the 
world unto Himself, and that the supreme act 
of the infinite Father is the embodiment of Him- 
self in such way that God might be the Son of 
God and the Son of Man at once, and thus come 
so near to man as to draw him into a reconcilia- 
tion ; that God is in Christ, not that Christ 
stands between an irate God and a crouching, 
shivering creature, Christ the only good one, 
man bad and God worse, but that God is Christ 
and Christ is God, and all the good on the part 
of God is as voluntary as is all the evil on the 
part of man ; that God is the Father of all men, 
and could not forbear when He saw His children 
sinning and suffering ; but came in the flesh, 
that in the flesh, with arms of flesh and a heart 
of flesh, He might wrap the world to His bosom 
and warm man's heart into a generous willing- 
ness to be at one with the most generous God. 

I. Look at the evils begotten of the false, my- 
thologic, Pagan form of Christianity. 

I. It promotes priestcraft. If God be still 
unreconciled to man there must be some pro- 
cesses instituted which shall take their effect, 
not on the character of the worshipper, who is 
now supposed to desire salvation, but upon the 
God who is still supposed to be unappeased. 



The multitude of men have not time to investi- 
gate the questions connected with this grave 
issue — the pressure of business, the toil to live, 
the belittling of the intellect by these incessant 
secular employments, unfit most men to con- 
template their conditions, their relations, and 
their destiny. Moreover, if this view of God be 
true, it is a terrible thing to think of Him at all. 
One may so easily go wrong in thought, and 
He knows all things, and He stands like an ogre 
ready to devour. 

This heathenish representation of God makes 
men desperate or timid, hardens or paralyzes, 
produces Atheism or superstition. If the man 
be disposed to brave the terrors of the situation, 
he says, " If God be such a God, I must spend 
my eternity in peril, no matter what I do — and 
rather than be in such a case let me be damned 
and done for as soon as possible. Anything is 
better than this state of suspense." And he 
goes off to his sins and pleasures, a hardened 
man. 

But when this view is presented to one with 
religious tendencies he falls into agues of fear 
and fevers of apprehension, and lies cowering 
and unmanned, the walls of the world and the 
ceiling of the sky stonily closing around him 
and down on him, life a dungeon, an oubliette, 
in which the prisoner cries, and is not heard, 
gazes wildly about him, and at last detects an 
eye upon him, the eye of the unsleeping and 
unwinking watcher, who is his omnipotent foe. 
At the moment when he is about to fly into the 
arms of madness as a refuge from thought, one 
comes into him, a calm visitor, with an official 
appearance and tone. How readily is he wel- 
comed ! " Anywhere, anyhow out of this 
agony ! " says the wretch. It is the moment 
for priestcraft to do its work, to represent itself 
clothed with powers that by ritual, incantation, 
or cabala may soothe the angered God and turn 
destruction from the worshipper. And all that 
is injurious both to him who practises and to 
^.him who suffers priestcraft, comes of this Pagan 
presentment of the All-Father. 

2. It promotes fanaticism. It makes the man 
think that somehow, by act that is disagreeable 
to himself, he can do that which is agreeable to 
his God. The best exercises of the human soul 
are thus stained. Prayer, that should be the 
child's long, deep, sweet breathing, as it lies 
at rest on the bosom of its father, is turned into 
the howl or scream of the beseeching wretch 
that is dragged by the hair from the cabin by a 
bloody pirate about to slay him on the deck. 
Repentance, that should be a change of mind 



Reconciliation. 



295 



from a state in which it loved sin and hated 
God to a state in which it loves God and hates 
sin, becomes the demon of penance that pre- 
scribes flaggelations of the flesh for the disci- 
pline of the spirit and the reduction of the body 
for the growth of the soul. Fanaticism is not 
the weakness of the ignorant alone. It may be 
in the most cultivated. It may be in cathedral 
as in conventicle. Give any man a wrong idea 
of God, and he begins to go wrong in all his 
thoughts of God and all his ways toward God. 
He welcomes anything that will come in between 
him and God. He will even idolize the sacra- 
ments and the Church, and fanatically believe 
that they can protect him from God. Therein 
is the hurtfulness of the whole idea ; it makes 
God a being from whom man is to be protected, 
the great raider through His universe, the great 
cannibal whose food is not human flesh but 
human souls. It is a deadness, a darkness, a 
damnation. 

3. Wrongful toward man, this Pagan form 
of Christianity is dishonoring to God. It is hard 
enough to have man bad, but it is horrible to 
feel that both man and God are bad. Whence 
did man receive ideas of nobleness, generosity, 
charity, goodness, lovingness, sweetness, beauty, 
nobility ? Did they come from God or from 
himself? If from God, then the Father of man 
implanted in man ideas, thoughts, conceptions, 
the best of their kind, which He sets himself to 
outrage, if this Pagan Christianity be true. He 
made me a father, t- as begetting in me ideas 
of fatherliness, and then treats me as if He were 
the keeper of a great workhouse, and I a help- 
less orphan He had in charge, to grind all out 
of He could. If this be true, the universe is not 
to you your father's house of many mansions, 
but a strange city in which you are a vagrant 
child, and He an all-powerful and ever-prowl- 
ing policeman, whom you must by all means 
dodge, round whatsoever corners you may, but 
who is sure to clutch you at last with His all- 
crushing hand. He must be better than my 
father or rny mother, unless the creature be 
better than the Creator. But if this view of 
God be true, there is no other father in the 
universe so insane and malignant as He. A 
theory which logically lands me on a proposition 
assertive of such blasphemy must be essentially 
erroneous and vicious. 

4. It is injurious to the personal character of 
the believer. A man is what his creed is. He 
can be no better, no worse. It is true that a 
man may " build better than he knows," but it 
is false that a man may be better than he be- 



lieves. The highest rung in the ladder of one's 
faith is one's belief of God. That marks the 
man's altitude. The sweep of the sight of his 
soul is the horizon made by the plane that cuts 
the axis of his vision as he stands there. No 
man is greater than his God. No woman is 
better than her God. Every man falls below 
his ideal. His highest ideal is his conception 
of his God. That low, he is low. He will 
strive to be like his God. Now set in him the 
idea of God as a dark, hard, cruel, unrelenting 
being — or weak because passionate — and see 
what a man you will make of him. Sometimes 
we have such a dramatic representation as this : 
God is represented on His throne, and mad 
exceedingly. Justice stands by and says, " Slay 
the sinner," and God sides with Justice and 
wants to do it. But Mercy pleads, "Hold! I 
have a substitute," and brings forward the Son 
of God. Mercy prevails and Justice is angry. 
God soothes Justice by letting Justice use his 
sword on God's Only-Begotten. Mercy nevei 
forgives Justice and Justice never forgives Mercy, 
and Jehovah must sit between to keep the peace 
between these belligerent "attributes." Oh 1 
it is a fearful, a horrible picture to paint me of 
my God. Brethren, brethren, this kind of stuff 
may do for your theatres, your Dantean and 
Miltonic poems, but it is not religion, it is not 
Christianity; it must be most offensive to Christ 
when He hears this grand nonsense which makes 
men wild with an excitement that injures all 
their moral powers. 

It is this belief that has made the world venge- 
ful, that has allowed so many crimes to be per- 
petrated in the name of religion, that has put 
the scowl on the faces of " the faithful," and led 
to the attempt to propagate love by the lash. It 
has dethroned God in the minds of thinking peo- 
ple. It has studied the little lake of humanity 
lashed by passion into its small rage, and trans-- 
ferred the idea to God, enlarged so as to ap- 
proach His infinite characteristics. Who can 
reverence, who can love such a God ? If God 
be such as this mythology represents Him, there 
is nothing so revolting in all that classic Pagan- 
ism which has disappeared : and rather than 
worship such a being let us build temples to the 
gods of Olympus, and find refuge from the ter- 
rors of St. Peter's in the quiet of the Pan- 
theon. 

II. We turn to consider the advantages of the 
Christianity of the New Testament, Paul's idea 
of Christ's Christianity. 

1. It gives the Great God, the Maker of angels 
and of men, the Father of lights and spirits, His 



296 



Reconciliation. 



rightful place in the thoughts of His chil- 
dren. 

Our adorable Saviour has taught us to say in 
our prayer " Our Father." Is God no more than 
a creator to me ? He is that much to the stones 
of the ground and the flowers of the field. Yes, 
He is more : He is Father. This is at the bot- 
tom of all my relations to Him. My thoughts 
must be built upon this foundation, suitably to 
this foundation. Whatever is inconsistent with 
rational conceptions of fatherhood must be re- 
jected as to God. And that all men may have 
rational ideas of fatherhood He has created only 
one man, and made every man besides to be 
some human being's son, thus by the very mode 
of propagating the race setting before every man 
a human relationship on which he might climb 
toward God. 

Every man of us is father or son, or both. In 
prayer and promise God hath taught us thus to 
think of Him. " Like as a father," is the fa-^ 
vorite formula of God. To think of Him cor- 
rectly I must take the best father I know, my 
own father, and I must expand his strength into 
omnipotence, his faculties into omniscience, his 
purity into infinite holiness, and his tenderness 
into infinite love. In this process I must not so 
enlarge him as to carry him beyond the bounds 
of the father-idea. Becoming more all these, he 
must be becoming more "my father." And 
then, when all this is accomplished in my 
thoughts, I may ask myself, "How would such 
a father, still my father, feel and act toward 
me ?" All that I read in the New Testament, 
dear brethren, so corresponds with my best 
thoughts of God in my best moments, that I 
am sure He must be better than Saturn, of 
the old Greek mythology, who ate his children. 

There is a dignity assigned to our Heavenly 
Father in Christ's representations which contrasts 
with the abhorrent idea of a raging and foaming 
mad God set forth in the mythologic form of 
Christianity. No sin of the creature betrays 
the Creator into a weak wickedness. " God is 
love." He is the Giver of "every good and 
every perfect gift." "He loved the world, so 
loved it as to give His only-begotten Son, that 
whosoever believeth in Him might not perish, 
but have everlasting life." No sinner can be so 
dear to Him as to cause Him to look upon ini- 
quity with the least favor, and no sin so foul and 
so offensive as to cause Him to love less His dear 
child who is soiling himself with the filth of 
iniquity. "Just and the Justifier," this is the 
noble description given of the character and 
work of the Heavenly Father. The true the- \ 



ology teaches this lesson : Justice that is not 
merciful is unjust, and Mercy that is not just 
is unmerciful. 

2. And thus Christ's representations of the 
Father's character, and the Father's purposes, 
plans, and operations for the salvation of sinners, 
gives a noble, uplifting idea of God, taking all 
slavish horror of Him out of the human heart. 
But it does more. It sets men at work for salva- 
tion in the right way, namely, at their end of 
the line, not God's. They need no more priest. 
A priest in the church now is an impertinence. 
There is one High-Priest, Christ Jesus, who was 
God manifest in the flesh, who became, of His 
own free-will, a propitiation for our sins. The 
Heavenly Father has reserved the whole mo- 
nopoly of redemption to Himself, as He did the 
monopoly of creation. God is His own priest. 
Nothing shall stand between Him and His poor 
children. They may go far, far into wander- 
ings, but He will never give them up. He would 
tear the stars away and divide all the floods of 
worlds that fill the channels of the universe, to 
pluck one of His drowning children from the 
dark abysses if that child would let Him. It is 
all right on the side of the heart of God. 

Then, "what must I do to be saved?" I 
must repent and believe. I am to make no 
change in the mind of God ; the whole change 
must be in me. Repentance is the change of 
my mind, not God's — there is nothing more for 
God to do. He is all right, and tender, and loving 
to me. Since Jesus died, I know God is recon- 
ciled. It is a waste of time and strength, and 
an injury, to attempt anything that will change 
God's feelings toward me. They are full tender 
now. He loves me. I must love Him. Ac- 
cording to the Pagan view of God, He is to be 
changed; according to the Christian view, / am 
to be changed. 

3. Christ's Christianity gives the grand act 
and fact of the ato7iement its proper value. 

The mythologic view makes Christ's de^th 
the slaughter of an innocent for the guilty, a 
thing that shocks the moral sense of mankind. 
But what saith this Scripture? " God was in 
Christ.' 1 '' Make God and Christ two, and then 
one of two things follows, either (1) God com- 
mitted an outrage on Jesus, or (2) the death of 
Jesus was of no more moral value to mankind 
than the demise of any other good but weak 
enthusiast. But say those grand words and be- 
lieve them, "God was in Christ." He said, 
"I and my Father are one." Say " God is in 
Christ," and you say what may as much tran- 
scend the reason as any other proposition, but 



Reconciliation. 



297 



you do not say what shocks the moral sense. 
For an at-one-7nent God and humanity must 
touch somewhere. Where is God ? In the 
cold earth or the greedy sea, or the far-off 
heaven with its gaud of spangles ? God is in 
Christ. Everywhere for His purposes, but in 
Christ for my needs. 

Nothing seems plainer, dear brethren, than 
that it is impossible for me to be good so long as 
there is no reconciliation between the Heavenly 
Father and my soul, no matter whether the fault 
be in Him or in me. If He will not be recon- 
ciled, then I have the fact of a bitterly bad and 
implacable omnipotence arrayed against me to 
torment and madden me into all kinds of wicked- 
ness. If I refuse to be reunited to Him, on the 
supposition that He is good and forgiving, that 
very refusal is an intense wickedness. 

God must be reconciled to me, or else my 
reconciliation to Him will be unavailing. I can 
do nothing to reconcile Him. If it do not come 
spontaneously from the springs of His own good- 
ness, it will never come. He is infinite; lam 
finite. He is father; I am child. He may love 
me before I love Him, but I never can love Him 
until I know that He loves me. That is human 
nature. Is the representation of Christ's Chris- 
tianity reasonably responsive to the weaknesses 
and defects of my nature ? In other words, does 
it show that God was reconciled to me while I 
was fighting against Him, and thai; God loved 
me while I hated Him? Yes, that is just what 
it does. 

It sets forth that while the world was far from 
God, He came to the poor, far-gone world ; that 
while the Prodigal Son had forgotten the Father, 
the Father held the Son in the most tender 
remembrance ; that when no cry went up to the 
Heavenly Father, He filled the world with calls 
for His lost child; that when that child was 
taking no step backward and upward toward 
Him, He came the whole distance that divided 
them ; that when man would not be in God, 
then God would be in man. According to finite 
reason God cannot be humanized, but according 
to infinite reason, humanity can be made divine. 

"Is God reconciled to me?" Go ask Him; 
there He is in Christ. Question that meek One 
and He will answer you. Why was He born of 
a virgin ? Why did He suffer under Pontius 
Pilate ? Why did He die ? Why was He buried ? 
Why did He descend in hell? Why did He 
rise the third day ? Why did He ascend into 
Heaven ? Why does He sit at the right hand 
of God the Father Almighty ? Why will He 
come to judge the living and the dead? If God 



were not reconciled, would He wear our flesh, 
climb the rugged heights of our agony, descend 
to the field of our defeat and loathsome humilia- 
tion in the grave, lift a human body up before 
the eyes of the angels who turn worshipping 
toward the throne of Jehovah, and fetch back to 
the judgment-seat of the world, not the grand 
head of an Olympian Jove, but the tender heart 
of a gentle brother? "God commendeth His 
love to us in that while we were yet sinners 
(enemies) Christ died for us." 

The cross of Jesus, by which I mean no rhe- 
torical flourish, but the doctrine of the atone- 
ment, the doctrine of the oneness of God and 
Christ, is the supreme necessity of humanity. 
If God is not my implacable enemy then He is 
reconciled, although I have been so offensive. 
If reconciled, somewhere, somehow, He must 
show it. Where? How? On the Cross. If 
not there, then nowhere. I must know two 
things, — first, that the Omnipotent Father and 
King is reconciled ; and, second, that He desires 
to have me reconciled. Prove these two pro- 
positions to me and you may melt down my 
heart into lovingness. Until believed, I shall 
carry unhappily forever a heart as hard as ada- 
ment and as cold as ice. 

Blessed be Christ, my brethren, that is the 
whole work of the Christian ministry. Ours is 
a ministry, not a priesthood. We have no sacri- 
fice wherewith to approach unto God, but we 
have an embassage wherewith to approach unto 
you. Nothing is to be done upon God's part, 
and upon yours only to be reconciled to your 
best friend. Hear the Gospel of the Son of 
God. " For it pleased the Father that in Him 
[you know who that is] should all fullness dwell, 
and having made peace through the blood of 
His cross by Him to reconcile all things unto 
Himself." O believe that " it pleased the Fa- 
ther," not that He was reluctant and bribed by 
purchase-money stained with blood, but that 
it pleased Him to have it so. And now " He 
hath committed unto us the ministry of recon- 
ciliation ! " 

O blessed commission ! God is in Christ; 
and He is Christ doing a great work. What is 
it? "Reconciling the world unto Himself," 
and He calls us, His ministers, to help Him. 
Let me, your pastor, help Him. Let me recon- 
cile you to our dear Heavenly Father. That is 
all I can do for you. I have no priestly power 
and no magic charm. But I must persuade you, 
I must beseech you, I must follow you through 
all your walks of business and of pleasure ; I 
must push aside your tempters ; if necessary I 



298 



Reconciliation. 



must fall upon my knees, not to God, but to you, 
and pray and beseech you to be reconciled unto 
God. I have no personal claim upon you. As 
your minister, mine is an official position, but it 
is an official position of august honor and pro- 
digious responsibility. You must not silence 
me. You must not by your courtesies and kind- 
ness bribe me to be silent. Let me speak. It 
is God that beseeches you by me. 

"As though God did beseech you !" What 
is that? Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O 
earth. There is a prayer and a pleading in 
which all the honor of God and all the hopes of 
man are involved. Who prays ? Man, stricken, 
smitten, labor-sore, sin-poisoned, perilled, and 
perishing man ? No ! It is God at prayer. It 
is the Creator pleading with the creature. It is 
the infinite Father down before the child, cry- 
ing to him — crying for peace, reconciliation, and 
love ! 

O my beloved, hear Him, love Him ; let my( 
embassage for Him be a success. Cry out now, 
not like the dying royal apostate, u O Galilean, 



thou hast conquered," but in the language of 
sacred song — 

" Nay, but I yield, I yield, 
I ran hold out no more ; 
I sink by dying love compelled, 
And own Thee conqueror." 

Young men and maidens, old men and mo- 
thers, would that now you would let me look 
lovingly down into the eyes of you all and say, 
of a truth, "You that were sometime alienated 
and enemies in your minds by wicked works, 
yet now hath He reconciled in the body of His 
flesh through death, to present you holy and 
unblameable and unreproveable in His sight ; if 
ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, 
and be not moved away from the hope of the 
Gospel, which ye have heard and which was 
preached to every creature under heaven, where- 
of I (your pastor) am made a minister." For 
which may God be thanked forever and for- 
ever. Amen. 



XLVIII. 

§nt\mm *i ©testiatutt} m tht §iU. 

"BUT THIS I SAY, BRETHREN, THE TIME IS SHORT. IT REMAINETH THAT BOTH THEY THAT HAVE 
WIVES BE AS THOUGH THEY HAD NONE J AND THEY THAT WEEP AS THOUGH THEY WEPT 
NOT; AND THEY THAT REJOICE AS THOUGH THEY REJOICED NOT; AND THEY THAT Bl Y AS 
THOUGH THEY POSSESSED NOT ; AND THEY THAT USE THIS WORLD AS NOT ABUSING IT \ 
FOR THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD PASSETH AWAY." 1 COR. VII. 29. 



The mistakes of men as to the office and 
function of Christianity are largely in the way 
of its progress. Even when understood, there 
will still be the " enmity of the carnal mind" 
and "the offence of the cross," which only the 
power of God's grace can break. But why 
should unnecessary difficulties and obstructions 
be created ? 

Christianity was made for man, not man for 
Christianity. It finds man not, to be sure, just 
as God made him, but as God made him and 
sin has spoiled him. It finds man with a cer- 
tain mental and moral constitution, not in its 
normal state, but very much decayed by his 
own sin and the sins of his forefathers, back to 
the first sin of the first sinner. What does it pro- 
pose to do for this poor man ? Put him in a 
strait-jacket because he is insane ? No ! It 
proposes to place him under such influences as 
shall bring him to right-mindedness. It is not 
a mechanical restraint; it is a constitutional 
cure. It does not work from without; it works 
from within. It is not a destroyer ; it is a recti- 
fier. Because the fine instrument of the soul is 
out of tune, Christianity does not propose to 
•tear all its strings away ; it rather proposes to 
" tune " this wonderful instrument, and bring it 
into accord with the sure and certain harmonies 
of God's universe. There is not an appetite, 
passion, faculty, or power of body, mind, or 
soul, which has not been injured by sin; but 
there is not one which is useless or injurious 
to man ; and consequently, if Christianity be 
a blessing, it will seek to break none of these 
down, but to purge away the influence of sin ; 
to adjust, rectify, harmonize, strengthen, and 
direct the play of all these human powers. If 
men conceive anything else to be the office of 



Christianity, no wonder they reject it : they 
shoidd reject whatever proposes to destroy the 
good work of the Great Creator. But every 
teaching of Jesus and His apostles, when rightly 
understood, corresponds with common sense 
and the well ascertained laws of thought and 
life, and that is firima facie evidence of the 
truth of our blessed religion. 

In a thoroughly regenerated man old things 
have passed away and all things become new. 
He was sick. He is well — so well as not to be 
conscious of being healthy. That is only perfect 
health when a man does not think whether he 
is sick or well, and when, if you ask him very 
strictly, "How are you?" it startles him: he 
has not felt himself; he has not even known 
that he was, at all — so perfectly and purely have 
all the functions of life been discharged. Blessed 
is the man who is well, and yet does not know 
how he is! who serves God so thoroughly 
in everything that he is not conscious of the 
service ! If a merchant has to brace his moral 
constitution every morning by a resolution not 
to cheat anybody, he is not sound at the heart, 
and you would not trade with such a man. 
You must have passed the period of " resolu- 
tions." 

This text before us seems to illustrate what 
has just been said. It shows that, in Paul's 
estimate, Christianity had not come to break up 
a single relationship of life, to mar a single 
pleasure, to deepen a single grief, to paralyze a 
single power, or curse a single legitimate employ- 
ment. It shows that he believed that religion 
is not a mere pietism, asceticism, or mysticism ; 
that it is not merely a ceremonial for the tem- 
ple or a sentiment for the closet, to be hung 
up in the church every Sunday night at nine 



gOO Influence of Christianity on the Life. 



o'clock, like the robes of the priest in the ves- 
try, to be taken down on the next Sunday- 
morning at half-past ten o'clock, and worn twice 
that day, and never seen elsewhere ; that it is not 
to be divorced from common life and common 
things ; but that, being an inward and power- 
ful principle, it is to send its blessed rectifying 
and beautifying influence up among the loftiest 
thoughts, feelings, and aspirations, and down to 
the lowest employment of humanity : up from 
the measuring of a yard of cloth or a peck of 
coal, to the most rapt and rapturous shoutings 
of the soul in its moments of intensest spiritual 
ecstasy. 

Let us see how he unfolds this thought in the 
category of the text. 

I. Christianity does not in anywise intend to 
pluck out of our hearts any of the sweet roots 
from which spring the flowers of love, or to 
break up any of the dear relationships of life. 

There is none of that kind of radicalism in 
Christianity which severs the relation of husband 
and wife, parent and child, master and servant, 
and lays the whole social garden in a waste ; 
but there is that kind of radicalism which goes 
down to the roots of all the affections, and purges 
and sweetens the springs of love. The apostle 
selects the tenderest and noblest of all the rela- 
tionships of life, that between husband and wife, 
to illustrate his principle. Christianity does not 
debar a man from any association or relationship 
which does not debase him. It does not enjoin 
celibacy. It expressly teaches, as in I Tim. iv., 
that to " forbid to marry " is a doctrine of devils, 
signifying that the man who administers to any 
man or woman a vow of celibacy is doing a 
devilish work, and they who assume such a vow 
are " giving heed to seducing spirits." It does 
not say that men must not have wives, but it 
does teach a moderation in the affections, and 
does put a solemn and holy influence over the 
loves of life. The Christian man that has a 
wife is to be so ready for all the reasonable 
demands of life and society that no celibate can 
turn upon him and say, " See how much more 
free I am for usefulness than you" — to the great 
disparagement of marriage, sweet symbol of 
Christ's relation to His beautiful bride, the 
Church. 

There are times and seasons when he who 
loves most tenderly must behave most bravely. 
There are occasions when humanity or one's 
country will peal such calls upon the con- 
science that the Christian man must rise up 
from amid the softest embraces, and, blinding 
himself to the brightness and beauty behind 



him, gaze manfully and dutifully unto the stern 
and stormy night before him. He may for a 
single moment strain to his heart the form most 
beloved, and then plunge into the thick of the 
tempestuous darkness, for God's sake and for 
Man's. The weakly uxorious will degrade the 
estate of love by shutting the door in the face 
of duty, and sinking into dreams of sweetness in 
the arms of beauty. But a man whose affections 
are regulated by Christian principle will have 
his wife, and yet, so far as society, his country, 
and the Church of God are concerned, he will 
be as free to toil or fight as if no real love 
reigned in his heart. And the Christian wife or 
lady-love will give the elect and beloved one to 
the world, and sit firmly waiting, having a hus- 
band, loving him in the most beautiful sense, 
and holding him by the strongest tie, and yet, 
by reason of devotion to duty, be as though she 
had none. 

2. The same principle is applied to men in 
their troubles and griefs: "It remaineth that 
they that weep be as thoujh they wept not." 

There is nothing in Christian teaching 01 
holy living to make men stoical. Christianity 
does not solve the problem of trouble by render- 
ing men insensible. On the contrary, there is 
everything in its solemn and tender teachings 
of God and Christ, of life and death, of heaven 
and hell, of personal responsibility, of faith and 
hope and charity, to sharpen the intellect, to 
warm the emotions, to arouse the conscience, 
and to quicken the whole spiritual man into an 
acute sensitiveness. If a religion came with a 
command not to weep, or proposed a discipline 
which should blunt every sensibility, deaden 
every feeling, and dry up the founts of tears, 
men would have reasonable ground to reject it. 
But Christianity proposes no such inhuman and 
monstrous an achievement. The truest are 
always the tenderest. The bravest are always 
the gentlest. Woe to the man who weeps not. 
Shame to the man who boasts that he does not 
weep. Heroes have always been weepers. Men 
that have carried thunder in their hands and 
lightning in their eyes, have had showers of 
tears upon their cheeks, from the braves who 
roar in Homer's lines down to the grandest doers 
of our own age. The poets have seen this. 
Wherefore they have made sweetest tears to fall 
from eyes of roughest blacksmiths down on 
their anvils, or with the horny hand of plough- 
men wiped the dews of tenderness from sun- 
burnt cheeks. 

And He, the Greatest and the Best, the Son 
of Man, the Son of Mary, the Son of God, the 



Influence of Christianity on the Life. 301 



Saviour of the world, who dared the greatest 
things, and endured the greatest things, and 
did the greatest things, He was the gentlest, 
tenderest hero of all. There is no more won- 
derful combination of two words in any language 
than that in John xi. 35, " Jesus wept." Jesus 
— the Loftiest ! Wept— the Lowliest ! Jesus — 
Heaven ! Wept — Earth ! Jesus — God ! Wept 
— Man ! At the grave of Lazarus, Heaven and 
Earth kissed each other, and God and Man em- 
braced each other, in the tears of Jesus. 

And shall I, His minister, turn to you and 
say, "You must not weep; it is unmanly to 
weep ; it is unchristian to weep ?" No : I tell 
you to weep. When the desire of your eye 
fails ; when the flowers of your heart wither ; 
when the grand disappointments of life smite 
you ; when love is unrequited ; when Absalom 
rebels ; when you gaze upon some perverse and 
doomed but loved Jerusalem : when Lazarus 
lies in his grave — weep! "Jesus wept!" He 
sighed and trembled like a timid and bereaved 
girl, but for the love He bore His dead friend He 
marched into the midst of bitter and infuriated 
foes. When he stood by the grave of Lazarus 
he wept like a man, but he wrought like a God. 

There is our example. The grief that para- 
lyzes, the grief that unfits us for our duty, the 
grief that causes us to make others grieve un- 
necessarily, the grief that keeps us from the 
House of Prayer and makes us refuse the conso- 
lations of the Gospel, is a grief at once inordi- 
nate, unreasonable, unchristian, and therefore 
unmanly. Our faith in the good government 
of God should enable us to go forward on the 
path of duty, whatever grief may lay hot and 
heavy upon our hearts. He is the Christian 
man who weeps and works ; weeps and fights ; 
weeps and makes no others weep. A dead love, 
a faithless friend, a barbed arrow, may be in his 
heart. He may weep inwardly. He may go 
out into the park at night, and, clinging to a 
senseless and unsympathizing tree, may pour 
the wail of his indescribable agony on the night 
air ; or, having an unutterable sorrow, he may 
often be ready to scream hysterically in a crowd ; 
but he fastens and holds it back, turns the key 
on the skeleton closet of his heart, locks the 
beast in the cellar of his soul, and puts lights in 
all the chambers of his life, that wayfarers in 
the night may be cheered by him that hath a 
hidden horror in his house. Such a man goes 
from the closet or the sleepless couch out to his 
daily work, and his fellow-workmen see only 
perhaps a little paleness on the temples, or a 
little sternness on the lip, but no trifling with 



the work, no shortcomings, no weaknesses ; he 
is the man who weeps and is as though he wept 
not — knowing that the time is short, and that 
the Blessed Christ's own hands are to wipe from 
his cheeks the stain of all sorrow, as he wipes 
from his soul the stain of all sin. 

3. It is a libel upon Christianity, propagated 
by professed friends and secret foes, that it is a 
joyless religion. 

If God made man, He must have made him 
to be happy. Any other supposition is a very 
foul slander upon the best of Beings. And see 
what great stimulants to his joyfulness God has 
given to man ! There is the fact of physical 
health, the wholesome secretions, the unmarked 
but delightfully diffused comfort of digestion, 
the sweet fannings of the blood by the wings of 
the lungs, and the auroral glintings of the inde- 
scribable and etherial nerve-fluid-all the phys- 
ical and sensuous enjoyments which, in fresh 
childhood and unbroken youth, are so exhila- 
rating ! After all, men have more hours of ease 
than of pain, of physical enjoyment than of 
bodily ailment. We note these latter. The 
most important characteristic of health is that 
men do not notice it ; their very unconscious- 
ness is proof of the perfection of this blessing. 

And there are the intellectual enjoyments, the 
eagle delight of perception, the judicial pleasure 
of comparison, the manly exertion of reason, 
the fairy play of the fancy, the gorgeous archi- 
tecture of the imagination, the tidal surgings of 
the emotions, and the godlike freedom of the 
will — all these, with their capabilities of being 
indefinitely enriched and expanded by culture, 
are sources of perpetual joy to man. 

And there is the delight of action, motion, 
stir, execution, influence upon one's fellows, 
achievement, success: what crowning joys are 
these ! 

And there are all the pleasures which come 
of honest love, its first flutter in the depths of 
the heart, its primal germinal throb, its up- 
springing and beautiful growth, the love-glance 
of the eye, the love-grasp of the hand, the 
blush, the stammering syllables struggling out 
with love's eloquence, the confession, the plight- 
ing of troth, the bridal, the blessed babes, the 
noble boys and gracious girls growing up as 
olive-plants about one's table, the consolidating 
of domestic happiness and the maturing of do- 
mestic loves. There are our manly friendships, 
in which two men have grace to see each other's 
graciousness, and nobleness to acknowledge 
each other's nobility, and fidelity to cleave to 
each other through all fortunes: what brave 



SOB 



Influence of Christianity on the Life. 



and gushing fountains of joy are these unselfish 
friendships ! But, brethren, I should be com- 
pelled to sweep the whole field of humanity and 
society to gather up all the reasons for rejoicing 
which the Heavenly Father has afforded to man. 

Has Christ come to snatch from us all that He 
gave us in our creation ? A Christian is one 
whose God is Christ. And Christ Jesus was 
the loveliest of men. Would you darken all life, 
eclipse its glories, blight its blooms, and make 
men dread to die and fear to live? Surely you 
would not. And Christ is infinitely more gra- 
cious than you. He cannot have come to give 
a darkness to the world. Nay, it is among the 
commands that Christians "rejoice." Sadness 
is sin; sin is sadness. Nothing darkens God's 
universe but sin. And Christ came to save us 
from our sins. Then rejoice in your exuberant 
health, in the bloom of your beauty, in the birth 
of your babes, in your growth of power and in- 
fluence among your fellow-men, in every phys- 
ical, intellectual, social pleasure which God 
gives you. That is your duty. 

But there is this element of moderation upon 
which Christianity insists, " Let those that re- 
joice be as though they rejoiced not." If our 
joy draw us from any pious duty, if it degen- 
erate into mere selfishness, if it come to be loved 
for its own sake rather than for the sake of the 
infinitely generous Giver of it, if it emasculate 
the strength of the intellect, destroy the fresh- 
ness of the heart or circumscribe the aspirations 
of the soul, joy is hurtful. Whatever be the 
delightfulness of our surroundings, the call of 
duty should be paramount, and promptly ac- 
knowledged. If you are at the dance or the 
opera when you should be aiding the orphan or 
comforting the widow, or attending your church 
meeting; if you are lapped in the dear delights 
of home, and abandon yourselves to ease, shut- 
ting out the cry of suffering humanity by your 
thick mahogany doors and heavy curtains, then 
here is against you this precept of the apostle 
which you are dishonoring. 

Oh, Christian people ! do show the world that 
men can be good and happy, happy and good, 
at once ; that there is no one walking in the 
counsel of the ungodly so happy as you who are 
in wisdom's ways; that no youth, standing in 
the way of sinners, is so joyful as you whose 
feet take hold of the testimonies of the Lord, 
and that there is no man sitting in the seat of 
the scornful who is so exultant as you who are 
numbered in the congregation of the righteous. 
Show sombre, heavy, hard Christians that you 
can rejoice in all the good and sweet and beau- 



tiful things that are, and yet rise as early, sit up 
as late, go as far, work as hard, do as much, give 
as freely, deny yourself as thoroughly, as the 
gloomiest of the gloomy people who wear such 
faces as men should never wear until they learn 
that God is dead and all the universe be-or- 
phaned. And thus you will obey the precept 
of the holy apostle, that they that rejoice be as 
though they rejoiced not. 

4. Christianity does not interfere destructively 
with men's business, but comes in to ennoble 
and prosper it. 

It is a mistake that one must retire from the 
world to be good. A merchant, a mechanic, an 
engineer, a lawyer, in full business may be just 
as saintly as a monk can be. Christianity, that 
interferes gently yet powerfully and healthfully 
with all things, has much to do with trade and 
business. There is not one system of morals for 
the market and another for the temple. A man 
is to be just as honest and earnest and pure in 
selling a yard of cloth or a pound of sugar as if 
he were delivering a truth from a pulpit. It is 
as certainly a mistake to neglect your business 
for your religion as to neglect your religion for 
your business. He has erroneous views of both 
who supposes that any legitimate demand of 
either interferes with any proper demand of the 
other. The Gospel recognizes business, trade, 
buying and selling, as among the lawful and dis- 
ciplinary employments of men. It does not 
teach that we are to shut up our shops and 
abandon our tools or merchandise. The neces- 
sity of exertion is laid upon us, and the Heav- 
enly Father has made it a blessing. We must 
not make it a curse. And such it is when it 
absorbs and controls our affections, or when it 
is allowed to interfere with the proper discharge 
of our pious duties to God or our relative duties 
to man. 

In the 12th of Romans, St. Paul puts it in 
this shape — "Not slothful in business, fervent 
in spirit, serving the Lord;" from which it is 
apparent that he did not consider diligence in 
business as interfering with fervor of spirit, nor 
spiritual devotion as antagonistic to secular pur- 
suits. It must be a point with you, my dear 
people, to demonstrate that your business is your 
religion and your religion your business, that 
one is the body and the other the soul of your 
life, and that these twain are really not twain 
but one, so intermingling that no one can say, 
" here his religion begins, there it ends ; here 
his business begins, there it ends." Your reli- 
gion must be to your whole life, not as the Gulf 
Stream to the Atlantic, that daintily gathers in 



Influence of Christianity on the Life. 303 



its blue robe so that if possible it may not touch 
the darker garment of the common sea, but as 
the salt to the ocean, present in each drop of 
the water, changing the whole character of all 
the vast ocean, giving its ponderous masses cir- 
culation and life, and yet making no increase in 
bulk. 

" Buy," my brethren, buy ! But when you 
have bought, " be as though you possessed not." 
Go into the markets, put in your money, your 
brains, your strength, and your time. Buy and 
sell and get gain. It is more manly than to be 
counting beads in a monastery. The young 
merchants of our congregation have their lives 
of buying and selling, of gaining and losing, 
before them. We should not call them off be- 
cause there are dangers there. We should not 
dissuade men from commerce and travel be- 
cause of the perils of the sea. But we should 
insist upon a good ship and compass and chart. 
Lay down for yourselves, my brethren, this 
simple rule of morals, that a man who trades 
on the time, the intellect, or capital at his 
command, as if it were his own, intending to 
devote the fortunate results thereof to himself 
is, in his heart of hearts, a dishonest man. You 
would consider him so if you were principal and 
he agent ; if you had given him the whole cap- 
ital to be used in a certain manner for ends that 
were yours, he to receive merely what you and 
he had agreed to be handsome wages. Any 
assumption upon his part that he owned the 
money, and was to appropriate the profits, 
would lead to a withdrawal of the capital and 
the confidence at once. 

Have you behaved so toward God ? Do you 
speak of what belongs to your Maker in the 
language of appropriation, saying " my store, 
my plantation, my stocks, my money, my 
houses?" And are the uses of all these things 
confined to yourself in fancy and in fact? If so 
you are a dishonest man. You wo*ld just as 
soon appropriate what your neighbor claims to 
be his, if you were sure of no detection or even 
of no penalty. Let us be heartily ashamed of 
ourselves, my brethren. We are agents, not 
principals ; what we use belongs to another, 
no', to us. We must show our books to God. 
When a man uses the property of his lord as if 
it were his own, entertaining himself and others 
upon the property of another as if he possessed 
it in his own right, God does not say to him 
simply, " Thou fool!" as to the man in the 
Gospel, but He says, " Thou cheat, thou sneak, 
thou thief! " 

Let two young men begin business with equal 



abilities and capital, the one on the plan of self- 
ishness, and the other upon the plan of morality ; 
the one buying and using what he had purchased 
as if he were the supreme judge, and there were 
no responsibility to another, the other buying 
and acting as if he possessed not, and as if all 
belonged to God, as it really does. With the 
same abilities and capital, their prospects of 
success and their perils of failure seem naturally 
equal. But the former is sustained by no high 
sense of responsibility ; the latter is. The for- 
mer has no consecration to his prosperity, the 
latter has ; the former sinks his profits in his 
little self, the latter lays up treasure in Heaven. 
When the former fails in business he is ruined ; 
all his expectations are blasted ; all the inten 
of his labor fails. When the same mercantile 
accident befalls the latter, he has the whole 
moral result of success ; he has done what he 
started to do, namely, to please God, and God 
has transferred the capital for a season to the 
charge of another. He has no complaints. Oh, 
how it breaks the power and the pleasure of 
business to conduct it on the basis of selfishness ! 

Be pleased to notice, dear brethren, that this 
injunction of moderation which Christianity es- 
tablishes is a blessing and not a curse ; is a wall 
against the invasion of evils, not an arbitrary 
and injurious restraint upon any good. It is 
that love may be more beautiful, more noble, 
more enduring, that the precept is written, " It 
remaineth that they that have wives be as though 
they had none," for the woman that belongs to 
God and is your wife is more a wife than if she 
had never received the chrism of a celestial con- 
secration. It is that human sorrow may not 
degenerate into the whine of a fretful weakness, 
but rise to the dignity of a solemn sacrament, 
that it is written, " It remaineth that they that 
weep be as though they wept not." It is that 
joy may not sink to a baby's amusement with 
its coral and its rattle, but ascend to the heights 
of a holy and majestic success, that it is written, 
" It remaineth that they that rejoice be as 
though they rejoice not." It is written, "and 
they that buy as though they possessed not," in 
order that the trade and traffic of human affairs 
may not degrade themselves to the meanness of 
the struggle between them that labor to cheat, 
and them that strive to avoid being cheated by 
cheating, but ascend to the dignity of commerce, 
which equally blesses him that buys and him 
that sells, and establishes a circulation among 
the material objects of the universe, accomplish- 
ing the designs of God, and being a ministry of 
growth and goodness to man. 



Influence of Christianity on the Life. 



And all this is summed up in the comprehen- 
sive precept, " It remaineth that they that use 
this world (be) as not abusing it !" 

Use the world ! Use its lights and shadows, 
its smiles and tears, its beauty and music and 
fragrance, its wisdom and wit, its force and its 
fun, its chances and changes, its seedtime and 
harvest ; whatever is grand or gay, beautiful or 
sublime, disciplinary or exhilarating, use it ! 
But as you would have its nicest uses, do not 
abuse it. Do not spoil the delight of drinking 
by drunkenness ; the pleasures of eating by 
gluttony ; the tender charm of love by licen- 
tiousness, and all the fine faculties of the soul 
by satiety ! Whatever a man does to the world 
which makes it less useful or less delightful to 
himself or to others, is an abuse. In the soil 
of the world sow your seed and gather your 
crop for eternity, but leave the soil richer than 
you found it, that succeeding laborers in this 
field of the Lord may bless and not curse you. 

Hear the reason. " The time is short : the 
fashion of this world passe th away." No man 
has time enough to use the world and to abuse 
it. The fashion, the scheme, the appearances 
of this world shift like the changing scenes of a 
theatre. " The fashion of this world passeth," 
is passing, away. Continents are grinding up 
and going down into the sea, and forces at work 
are preparing other lands to be upheaved. 
Childhood changes to youth, youth to manhood, 
manhood to old age. Beauty runs through the 
filter of decay into other forms of beauty, but 
the eyes that saw that will not see these. Riches 
take wing and fly from nest to nest. The men 
that wielded the power, used the money, and 
enjoyed the praises of a hundred years ago 
— not one of them survives; they are all free 
among the dead. And who will be here a hun- 
dred years to come ? 

" Who'll press for gold yon crowded street 
A hundred years to come ? 



Who'll tread this church with willing feci 

A hundred years to come ? 
Pale, trembling age and fiery youth, 
And childhood, with its brow of truth, 
The rich and poor, on land and sea — 
Where will the mighty millions be 

A hundred years to come ? 

We all within our graves shall sleep, 

A hundred years to come ; 
No living soul for us shall weep, 

A hundred years to come ; 
But other men our land will till, 
And others then our streets shall fill, 
And other singers, gay and bright, 
Shall rouse the drowsy hours of night, 

A hundred years to come " 

While we speak and hear, the shuttles that 
weave the thread of the present into the warp 
of the past, are flying with accelerating rapidity. 
But the web of character is being woven. Time 
is short, but character is long. Time flies, char- 
acter stays. The doing is soon over, but the 
deed stands. The builder rots in the corner of 
the crypt of the cathedral he has erected ; his 
ideal of beauty, which he has petrified into a 
house for God, endures through the centuries. 
The unseen worker in the sea, the little coral- 
builders that absorb and transform the lime of 
the sea into massive masonry, distil themselves 
into the oblivion of the ocean ; but the pillars 
which they have built shall uphold the conti- 
nents which shall sustain the mightiest works 
of man through many ages. 

Hear, then, oh hear, the solemn and tender 
words of the apostle : 

fi But this I say, brethren, the time is short: 
it remaineth that both they that have wives be 
as though they had none ; and they that weep 
as though they wept not ; and they that rejoice 
as though they rejoiced not ; and they that buy 
as though they possessed not ; and they that 
use this world as not abusing it ; for the fashion 
of this world passeth away." 



